Intro - First Chimp Fossil Flashcards
Anaximander (611-547 BCE)
- Didn’t think species were unchanging
- Thought some species of fish were intermediate
- Concluded: humans MUST be descended from another species
Plato (424-348 BCE)
- Species = type or kind of animals or plants
- Have essential nature (essence)
- Are unchanging
Medieval Europe
“Great Chain of Being” = unchanging nature of classes of humans and animals
- Fixed hierarchy (within nature - lower and higher (humans = top) forms of life)
- Elite at top (royalty & clergy)
- Ranked by degree of perfection
- Each is a product of special creation
- No intermediate forms = no mobility between classes
Ernest Mayr (1904-2005)
Biological Species Concept “BSC”
- Species is a reproductive community of individuals = find mates within own species & don’t usually mate outside own species
- Resemble each other = closely related to each other (heredity)
- No platonic essence
- Species CAN change over time
Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
“Enlightenment”
- Empiricism
- Obtain knowledge by observing nature
- Not by tradition, authority, or scripture
Carolus Linneus (1707-1778)
Swedish Naturalist
- Taxonomy & classification
- Binomial nomenclature = two names for individual species i.e. genus & species name
- Species NOT unchanging
Montesquieu (1689-1755)
- One species can give rise to another
- Number of species can increase over time
- Tree of Life = shows extinction & process of species over time
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
Charles Darwin’s grandfather
- Wrote books about evolution in verse; “Zoonomia”, “Phyologia”, “The Temple of Nature”
- All vertebrae animals = similar body structure form due to descent from common ancestor
- Bilateral Symmetry = equal on both sides of body
- Pentadactyl = 5 digits -> fingers and toes for humans
Lamarck (1744-1829)
- True = one species can give rise to another species
- False = mechanism -> inheritance of acquired characteristics; characteristics acquired during animal’s lifetime passed on to offspring
Archbishop Ussher (1625-1636)
- Biblical Chronology = counted generations in books of Old Testament
- Concluded: world was created on the evening of Sunday October 23rd, 4004 BC (now know the earth = 4.5 billion years old)
Cuvier & “Catastrophism” (1769-1832)
- How to explain fossils = successive groups of fossils, periodic extinctions & creations (catastrophes), “antediluvian” = before the flood (not a divine creation)
Hutton & Uniformitarianism (1720-1790)
- Present is the key to the past
- Processes observed today
- Operating over long periods of time
- Can produce geological features observed in the modern world
Charles Lyell (1797-1875)
The Principles of Geology (1830) = systemized all fields of evolution
- Earth history
- Gradual change
- Long period of time
Charles Darwin (1831)
The Origin of Species
- The Beagle Voyage = looked at details of coastal South America -> fauna and marine life
- Observation #1: extinct animal fossils resemble living ones in the SAME region
- Observation #2: geographic variation = birds similar, but different types live on different islands; overall similarity = common ancestor; superficial differences = beaks/plumage: adaption to local conditions
Darwin’s Ideas of Evolution
1837: began notebooks kept on Transmutation of Species
1. Evolution = descent with modification (transmutation of species); takes place over generations; needs a LONG period of time; earth changes -> animal & plants change (adaption)
2. Natural selection (mechanism) = sexual reproduction produces variation among offspring (not all offspring are a like); some offspring are better suited to conditions than others -> produce more offspring than others (FITNESS = reproductive fitness); over many generations produce enough change to result in a new species -> “struggle for survival”, “elimination of unfit”, or “differential reproduction”
Adaption
“Goodness” of fit of an organism with its environment = result of natural selection
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
An Essay on the Principle of Population
- More offspring produced than resources can support
- Periodically eliminated by warfare, disease, & famine
Wallace (1823-1913)
Independently came up with the idea of evolution (1856)
- Checks on human population growth (war, disease, famine, etc.) also apply to animals
- Variety in nature is affected by this process
- Can account for change through time