POWER POINT #9: BEYOND DARWIN

Here's a novel thought: instead of being taught as mindless, slavish dogma, evolutionary biologists have been busy in the last 150 years. They've been testing, retesting, modifying and in some cases rejecting aspects of Darwin's theory. This Power Point explains some of the major innovations, which (by the way) are all in the textbook:


Students who need to download the Power Point to complete their notes, and the Lecture Guide based on it, can do so here.

POWER POINTS #7 and #8: MUTATION, BIOTECHNOLOGY

Here's a link to our recent notes on 'Mutation!'

A PDF of the Lecture Guide based upon the Power Point is available here.

The Power Point with the Notes on Biotechnology is available here. All students will need to download the entire Power Point in order to finish the Lecture Guide, so make sure you do it!

Students who have lost their original Lecture Guide and need to get another copy can download the Guide as a PDF file here.

POWER POINT #6: MENDEL'S EXPERIMENTS

Here's the link that will take you to the Power Point containing the notes I've given in class on Mendel's experiments, probability and meiosis. The Lecture Guide (available here as a PDF file) is based upon these notes.

POWER POINT #5: DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA

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 much of this episode, broken up into chunks, over the next few days, so I thought I would provide a link to view the whole thing on-line, here.

SUMMER SCHOOL VIDEO: EXTINCTION!

EXTINCTION Thursday's class featured excerpts from 'Extinction!', which is Episode 3 from NOVA's 'Evolution' series (2001). 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.


Students have been given a worksheet based upon this video as homework, which is due on Monday. I encourage students to watch the video in its entirety for themselves if there are points that they don't get in class. We simply do not have enough class time to review this, but I know many students will want to see the whole story again, either by going to Google Video or watching it here:

POWER POINT #4: DEEP TIME!

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.

POWER POINT #3: DIVERSITY AND CLASSIFICATION

These notes were given to students on Wednesday, July 6th. The Power Point on "Diversity and Classification" can be uploaded here. The Lecture Guide based on the Power Point can be found as a PDF file here.

SECOND SESSION: POWER POINTS #1 and #2

The Power Point for Populations and Ecosystems is available here.

This continues the material from Chapters 3-5 that was begun in 'Populations and Ecosystems".

You can download it here.