CST STUDY SESSION

Parents and Guardians:

My biology students have an opportunity to attend an extra-credit Study Session on Tuesday, April 27th, between 3:15 and 5:30, in Room N-63.

This is on a first-come, first-served basis. Students who attend will work on packets to help them prepare for their Science CST given the following day (Wed. the 28th).

Please encourage your students to consider attending!

SHOW ME A WALKING FISH!

SHOW ME A WALKING FISH

This is the Power Point to go with Rubric Exercise 2, "Show Me A Walking Fish!" Use it to write an essay that addresses the following questions:

1) In your opinion, do transitional forms really exist? Why or why not?

2) Are the examples in this article truly transitional forms? How do you know?

3) If transitional forms exist, would they “prove” that living things share common descent?

4) How would a believer in ‘special creation’ explain the similarities between a coelocanth, a lungfish and an axolotl?



SHOW ME A WALKING FISH

EXTINCTION! (THE VIDEO)

EXTINCTION

Part of this video was shown in class and part during lunch for extra credit in the week before Spring Break. 'Extinction!' is Episode 3 from NOVA's 'Evolution' series (2001). If you missed it, here's a summary of the video:


"The video begins with paleontologist Peter Ward hunting for Permian fossils in South Africa's Karoo Desert, and relates ecological pyramids (which are like a 'house of cards') to mass extinctions, which are believed to be rare but important events in the history of life. It then follows the work of American Museum of Natural History researcher Michael Novacek in building the fossil record of small, shrew-like mammals from the Mesozoic, representative of the lineage that will survive the next mass extinction (the K/T event), which will claim the dinosaurs. It concludes with an examination of the role of human activity in accelerating the rate of extinction, with important attention to conservationists like Alan Rabinowitz."

I do not have enough class time to review this with students again, but students who need to review it can either go to Google Video, or watching it embedded here:



EXTINCTION

POWER POINTS: 'DEEP TIME' AND 'DARWIN'

The Power Point Lecture Notes on 'Deep Time' are available

The Power Point Lecture Notes on 'Deep Time' are available here.

A PDF of the Lecture Guide based upon those notes can be downloaded here.

The Power Point Lecture Notes on 'Deep Time' are available here.

Here's the Lecture Notes.

Here's a PDF file of the Lecture Guide based upon the notes.

The title, incidentally, is taken from the Daniel Dennett book which also inspired a two-hour episode of the NOVA 'Evolution' series. We will end up seeing the whole thing in class on Wednesday. Here's a link to view the whole thing on-line, here.