Lineage-Based Perspective

Often times a person lives their life based on how their own family would see it. Whether it disappoints or makes their family proud, it is inevitable; a person’s family will forever remain an important factor in their life, actions and the consequences that come with it. In “The Idea of Ancestry”, the author Etheridge Knight writes a poem where it is obvious that he is guilty of his actions and the shame and hurt it brings to his loved ones. Knight is haunted by the faces of his loved ones in his cell, and it is symbolic of the guilt he feels as he sits in prison and contemplates on his bad choices and addiction to heroin.

Dr Grisham spoke about how great it would be to observe the growth of a tree of life from its ancient base to the tips of its million modern branches just what we might see? Dr. Grisham stated may be single cell creatures or animal life, aquatic plants and animals modern mammals evolving from tiny rodent creatures. Dr. Grisham then stated a question that she believed many students might ask- that is why there are so many different types of living things? We then joined Ms. E Abraham in the science studio. The young mind (students) where presenting their ideas of what is a species. Many interesting definition was given however, the narrator commented that the children seemed to understand that species is a way of grouping animals. Dr. Grisham noted that all the children used external appearance as their main strategy for classifying things.

90. Mammals are members of a class of reptiles characterized by pressure of hair and

Anatomical Evidence – evidence relating to the structures of organisms and how they have evolved over time and might share a common ancestry.

Phylogenetic species concept would be the most expedient and effective process of collecting, naming, and describing what she found. Phylogenetic relies on common ancestry and shared evolutionary when defining a species.

10. Which is the most dominating taxon within the animal kingdom in terms of species diversity (making up approximately 25% of all known species)? [clue: which insect order?].

Mary Anning’s contribution to the development of the understanding of how reptiles contributed to evolution and to the understanding of fossils as extinct life forms was important.

In the science of paleontology, the history of life is studied. Paleontologists study fossils to learn the past ecologies, evolution, and the origins of humans. In order to understand the processes that have led to both the origination and destruction of organisms since life began, paleontologists incorporate both scientific knowledge and studies. Fossil findings are critically important for confirming predictions of evolution theory. Of the many discoveries that are made yearly to add depth to the understanding of evolution, an example is a recent discovery of a creature they named Tiktaalik. The Tiktaalik was uncovered to be a transitional animal between shallow-water fishes and limbed animals. The creature supports the idea that it emerged from both mammals and reptiles, suggesting that the two are related. These findings support prediction of evolution, contradicting the belief that God

This is believed to be a transitional between reptile and bird. However, there are six points that these supporters use with counterarguments with each one. First, this animal had a long bony tail similar to that of a reptile's (Martin). Conversely, most birds have a tail vertebrae in the embryonic stage which eventually forms into the pgyostyle which is an upstanding bone. The second point is that the Archaeopteryx had claws on its feet and feathered forelimbs (Martin). This cannot be used as evidence because many birds, such as the ostrich for example, have claws so it is not just a characteristic of reptiles (Martin). The third argument was that the bird had teeth but yet so did many ancient birds in the Mesozoic (Martin). The fourth statement used is the presence of a shallow breastbone (Martin). Similarly, most modern birds have the same shallow breastbone that are still classified solely as birds. The second last argument for the Archaeopteryx being the transitional fossil is the its bones were not hollow like modern birds but rather solid. This statement cannot be used however because it was discovered in recent years that the long bones in the bird are hollow. The final point and counterargument is that it predates the general arrival of birds by millions of years (Martin). A geologist in 1977 discovered bird fossils in western Colorado that dated as far back as 60-million years

This article shows readers that there is a way to know more about the past and how animal’s fossils can help understand animal evolution. In this article, the author is giving more opinion that evidence, but the

For example, A fish fossil called Rhipidistian was found. Because the bones from it are similar to amphibian. People thought that it is the transitional form between fish and amphibian. But when the living fossil called Coelacanth was found. The hypothesis was overthrew. Because the phylogeny of these two amphibians is very close. Research shows

As time progressed, Harry Whittington, Arthropod expert from Cambridge, along with other paleontologists revisited the Burgess Fauna. Whittington soon noticed that based on his current knowledge of phylogeny, that ambient Burgess fauna cannot be assigned a phylum. For example, he identified an arthropod by its tagmata, or fused segments. Marrella splendens, presented copious issues because the unusual spines on its head shield are uncharacteristic of the phylum Arthropoda (Brysse, 2008). Another morphologic conundrum lies in the classification of Opabinia. Walcott first identified this organism as an branchiopod crustacean belonging to the order Anostraca (Whittington, 1974). The Opabinia had no examples with biramous legs although it appeared that they would. Also, there were gills, and appendages that were different than most arthropods. The lobes, and gills of each were not derived from coxa but they extended directly from the body wall. In addition, Opabinia has 2 sets of paired eyes and one centralized pair of eyes (Brysse, 2008). Opabinia is enigmatic and does not belong to a phylum nor a group because of its bizarre makeup (Whittington, 1974). Wiwaxia was a supposed mollusk, but it had unusually setae and it possessed a jaw like structure (Brysse, 2008). Possibly the most important weird creature discovered is Pikaia. The Pikaia is the first part of the phylum chordata and this Annelid-like creature is a descendent of humans (Morris and Caron, 2012). All of these unusual creatures were first classified by Walcott into suitable phyla. Following the revisitation of the Burgess Shale Whittington failed to assign phyla to any of the listed organisms (Brysse, 2008) (Fig. 3 and 4). Overall, this investigation showed that the Middle Cambrian biota was stranger than first

Mastodonsaurus is the genus that derived from the middle Triassic period and is classified as Temnospondyl amphibian. Temnospondyli is often referred to as the primitive amphibians which were prosperous during the Carboniferous, Permian, and Triassic periods . This diverse group order was composed of a small to giant tetrapods. They go by several synonyms including Batrachosaurus,‭ ‬Labyrinthodon,‭ ‬Mastodonsaurus acuminatus,‭ ‬Mastodonsaurus conicus,‭ ‬Mastodonsaurus maximus‭ ‬,‭ ‬Mastodonsaurus tantus, and Salamandroides.‭ Their classification is listed as Chordata,‭ ‬Amphibia,‭ ‬Temnospondyli,‭ ‬Stereospondyli,‭ ‬Capitosauria,‭ ‬Mastodonsauridae. The Triassic group of temnospondyl is called Capitosauria, specifically characterized by their

In this lecture, Hothem mentions the varies ways in which Carl Linnaeus used Latin terms to distinguish and describe species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, and kingdom of plants and animals. Just like Thomas wrote in Man and the natural world (A history of the modern sensibility), where he uses the same concepts as Linnaeus to classify modern things, people, and animals, stating that “Essentially, there were three categories for animals: edible and inedible; wild and tame; useful and useless (53), this determines how even back then they would use their own views of everything and arrange it into classes. This can easily be a T-S, because growing up as a twin; people would categorize me as just that and not as an independent individual.

The purpose of taxa are to classify organisms with similar characteristics in the same group. The first taxa (kingdom) is the broadest group and the most specific is the taxa species. The genus name narrows the range of organisms to those whose specific traits are similar and the species name is given to one specific species where all the individuals have the same characterisitcs. The purpose of a genus is to show that all the individuals that belong to that genus are more closely related than to individuals