Fossil Record
What is a fossil?
A fossil is the preserved remains, trace, or impression of an organism that lived in the distant past.
What is natural selection?
The process by which individuals with traits better suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing those traits on to their offspring.
What is artificial selection?
A process where humans, instead of nature, select specific traits that will be passed to individual within a population.
What does common ancestry refer to in biology?
Common ancestry is finding the relatives of other organims by looking at multiple pieces of evidence to prove their relationship. Scienctist use cladogram to show these relationships.
What are natural resources?
Natural resources are resources that occur naturally, produced by Earth's processes.
How can fossils be used to determine the age of rocks?
The law of super position. The older rock layers are at the bottom and the younger rock layers are on top.
Give an example of a trait that might help an organism survive in a changing environment. You can give an example of something that we did in class.
The main cause for natural selection is because of a changing environement.
Larkeys- short legs did better in the forest. Long legs did better in the grassland bc they could run from predators.
Having bright colors to attract mates
Blending in with their environment
Provide an example of how humans have used artificial selection in agriculture (farming)?
-Cows to produce more milkk
- Corn- used to be small and less kernels, now they are larger with more kernels.
- Tomatoes to last longer
- Bananas to not have seeds and be sweeter.
How do scientist use cladograms to show the relationship between organisms?
The closer on the cladogram, the more related they organisms are. The farther, the less related. Scientist can put different traits on the cladogram to show the traits that organims have.
What are three types of natural resources?
Coal, oil, natural gas, water.
Name one pattern observed in the fossil record that supports the idea of evolution?
- Horses went from three toes to one toe
- Whales had four legs and evolved to have two fins.
- The first fossils were shells and they evolved over time to become more complex.
What is the difference between natural selection and artificial selection?
Natural selection occurs naturally, whereas artificial selection occurs because of humans.
What is one way that artificial selection has changed the traits of domesticated animals?
They have used artificial selecion/selective breeding in dogs to produce dogs that are hypoalergenic- have straigher backs(german shephards- have shorter legs- smashed faces(pugs).
Explain how genetic information (DNA) can support the idea of common ancestry.
The more similar the DNA, the more related organisms are. You have to look at the DNA, when the letters match, that represents more similarities.
How do geological processes affect groundwater distribution?
When there are bigger rocks, more water is able to build up/collect. When the Earth is made up of sand and water, less groundwater is able to collect. Leading us to believe that natural resources are UNEVENLY DISTRIBUTED.
What evidence fo fossils provide about the diversity of life forms in Earth's history?
They started out as simple organisms and became more complex over time.
Explain how environmental changes can affect the survival of species through natural selection.
If there is a fire in the environment and the species are forces to relocate, the organisms that blend in will survive. The organisms that don't blend in with their will be eaten by predators.
Describe the process of how cows have artifically seleted traits in cows.
Scientist have picked the cows that produce the most milk and insert those embryos in the cows that are better for breeding to produce cows with more milk. They are taking the desired traits and inserting them into the other cows to produce the traits that they want.
What are homologous structures, and how do they demonstrate common ancestry?
Explain how natural resources such as coal, oil, groundwater, and natural gas are unevenly distributed.
Some places have more natural resources than others. Places around the world that had more swampy areas are more likely to have coal. Places with more groundwater, have areas where there is more room for water to collect. NATURAL RESOURCES ARE UNEVENLY DISTRIBUTED.
When looking at a graph, how can you determine if there is gradual changes in life forms or drastic changes (extinction)?
Gradual changes will be a gradual line whereas dratsic changes will be a dropoff.
Explain what happened to the moth population and how they were an example of natural selection.
The moths were light at first and blended in with the light trees. The industrial revolution happened which caused the trees to become darker. At that point the darker moths survived and the lighter moths died off. This happend gradually over time.
Discuss the ethical implications of using artificial selection to modify organisms.
What are the four pieces of evidence that prove common ancestry AND EXPLAIN how they support common ancestry.
1. Homologous structures- same bones different functions.
2. DNA- the more similar the DNA, the more related they are
3. Embryos- the first stages of many organisms have the same embryological structures indicating they have a common ancestor.
4. Vestigial structures- the structures that we still have that our ancestors used but we don't use them anymore.
5. Fossils- fossil evidence