Lecture 1 Flashcards
Who is Linnaeus?
He was called Carl Von Linne but wrote under the Latin name Linnaeus and he was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist.
When was Linnaeus around?
Circa 1735
What was Linnaeus’s system called?
Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae
What did Systema Naturae do?
It charted life by dividing it into kingdoms, classes, orders, genera and species.
What did Linnaeus attempt to do?
He attempted to classify all life on Earth
When was Systema Naturae first published?
When Linnaeus was in his late twenties but he continued to refine the details throughout his life.
What is each specie in System Naturae?
Each species is a distinct archetype and a reflection of God’s intent.
What is Comte de Buffon’s full name?
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Was Comte de Buffon successful?
He was one of the most respected naturalists of his era.
What did Comte de Buffon publish?
Natural History
What speculation did Comte de Buffon make in Natural History?
That living creatures evolve according to natural laws.
What did Comte de Buffon dare to suggest?
That apes and apes and humans are related, and that all life has descended from a single ancestor.
Did De Buffon stand by what he said?
No, he recanted his findings under pressure saying ‘I abandon everything in my book…contrary to the narrative of Moses’.
When was Comte de Buffon around?
Circa 1749
What was Lamarck’s full name?
Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and he was French
When was Lamarck around?
1809
What did Lamarck do with evolution?
He championed evolution
What did Lamarck propose?
That living things evolve to become more complex through time.
What was Lamarck’s philosophie called?
Zoologique
What did Lamarck claim in Zoologique?
That ‘vital forces’ within creatures help them to adapt to their environments.
How do acquired traits develop?
Through use or disuse
What happens to acquired traits?
They are passed on to future generations
What does Lamarck think happened to wading birds?
He thinks that they evolved long legs as they stretched to keep high and dry.
Was Lamarck successful?
He is the most renowned, but not the only, proponent of evolution of this era.
When was Cuvier around?
1817
What did Cuvier see?
He saw catastrophes in fossil records
How did Cuvier see these catastrophes?
When the construction of canals and mines in the early 19th century happened, they unearthed fossils or bizarre and extinct creatures.
Where did Cuvier work?
He worked in the French national museum in Paris
What did Cuvier study?
He studied wooly mammoths and mastodons
What did Cuvier’s study show?
That these elephant like animals are not members of the modern elephant species and therefore represent earlier elephant relatives that no longer exist. Therefore he showed that species can go extinct and that extinction is a real biological phenomenon.
What did Cuvier’s results allow to be completed?
They allowed the conceptual framework to be completed which was needed to understand dinosaurs as extinct fossil animals.
When was the concept of evolution first established?
By the early 1800s
How many rules of thumb did stockbreeders and farmers have?
4
What was the first rule of thumb?
That stable varieties nearly always breed true
What was the second rule of thumb?
That you can mate two different parents to generate hybrids, which can be identical to one parent or combine features from both. Hybrid x hybrid crosses result in extreme variation in offspring and hybrids don’t breed true.
What was the third rule of thumb?
That there are occasional mutations (sports) even in stable varieties.
What was the fourth rule of thumb?
That sports can be backcrosses with normals to create a new stable variety.
What are Charles Darwin’s dates?
1809-1882
What are Alfred Russell Wallace’s dates?
1823-1913
What was their joint presentation called?
On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection.
Who did they read their presentation to and when?
It was read to Linnean Society on July 1st 1858.
What was the name of Wallace’s book and when was it published?
On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type - february 1958. Darwin had already come up with this theory and so on reading this, joined forces.
Who was Darwin the son of?
He was the son of a wealthy society doctor and financier. He was also the nephew of Josiah Wedgwood. ‘Sporting’ type.
Where was Darwin educated?
Shrewsbury School, University of Edinburgh and University of Cambridge
How was Darwin employed?
Self funded supernumeracy/companion to Captain Robert FitzRoy HMS Beagle
What is Hutton’s conformity?
The name given to landforms in Scotland where the junction between two types of rock formations can be seen. This proved his plutonist theories of uniformitarianism.
According to Ussher’s chronology, when was the Earth created?
It was created at 9am - October 23rd 4004 BC.
When did the HMS Beagle leave and return?
It left on Dec. 27th 1831 from Plymouth and returned on Oct. 2 1836 to Falmouth.
How many years did Darwin spend studying his theory before publishing it?
30 years
What happened on Jan 1837?
He made his first speech before the Royal Geological Society in London.
What happened on Jan 1839?
Marries Emma Wedgwood
What happened on Aug 1839?
He published ‘Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the countries visited during the voyage HMS beagle’
What happened Nov 1859?
Origin of species goes on sale
When was Darwinism first used?
April 1860
When was Descent of Man published?
March 1871 and also when the word evolution was first used.
Where was Wallace raised?
In genteel poverty and he moved five times during his childhood
Where was Wallace educated?
Hertford Grammar School
Where was Wallace employed?
Land surveyor, watch repairer, teacher, professional collector. South America/Malay archipelago
What was the name of Wallace’s law?
Sarawak law
What is the core theme of the Sarawak law?
That gradual geological changes are linked to animal and plant distribution
How many pieces of geological and geographical evidence did Wallace give?
Nine
What does the Sarawak Law state?
That ‘Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing allied species.’
What does the Sarawak law show?
That Wallace understood the result of evolution, but at this early stage he had no model of how it was actually achieved.
How many years after the Sarawak law was it before Wallace released his evolutionary theory based on natural selection?
Three
How long ago was the Earth formed?
4.6 billion years ago, known as archean
How long ago did the proterozoic era start?
2.5 billion years ago
How long ago did the paleozoic era start and end?
It started 542 million years ago and ended 252.2 million years ago
How long ago did the mesozoic era start and end?
It started 252.2 million years ago and ended 65.5 million years ago
How long ago did the cenozoic era start and end?
It started 65.5 million years ago and we are still in this era, the last strata of this era is known as the holocene.
What is our (humans) connection to fish?
Some of our arteries, muscles, nerves and bones mimic the gill structures in fish and sharks.
What other evidence is there for our connection to sealife?
Dolphin embryos grow hind limbs which then stop growing part way through development
What other evidence is there for our connection to snakes?
The extra bones attached to a python’s ribcage are half a pelvis and one of the back legs, which they have not completely lost. Pythons not the only, but the best, known for this feature
What are the five lines of evidence that ‘species are not immutable’
Fossil record, Homologies, Embryological similarities, Vestigial organs and Animal distribution patterns (eg. geographical variation in animal form)
How much of their genes do the Europeans share with the Neanderthals?
1.5-2.1%
How much of their genes do people from Asia and Oceania share with the Denisovians?
6%
What are the three main principles of Evolution?
Competition, Variation, Adaptation
What is the basic principle of Evolution?
Survival of the fecund, not the fittest
What contribute more genes to the next generation?
Most successful phenotypes
What do environments do to genotypes?
They influence how genotypes are translated into phenotypes
