big bang 13.7-13.8 billion years ago life arose 3.5 billion years ago anaerobic versus aerobic...
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Big Bang 13.7-13.8 billion years ago
Life arose 3.5 billion years ago
Anaerobic versus aerobic bacteria, fermentation, respiration
Photosynthetic prokaryotes, origin of oxygen atmosphere
Endosymbiosis: origin of eukaryotes, plants, fungi, and animals
Reticulate Evolution: Mitochondria, Chloroplasts
Phylogenetic Systematics = cladistics, clades
Importance of shared derived characteristics (synapomorphies)
Monophyletic groups (Polyphyletic, Paraphyletic)
Sister groups, outgroups
Rooting phylogenetic trees
Infer/identify ancestral states — polarize character state changes
Hierarchical classification, Latin binomial nomenclature
Pongid (“Hominid”) phylogeny, blood group types
Broca’s Area
MusicEmotions
Mabuya Egernia CtenotusEremia- scincus
Pongid Phyogeny
Prosimian
Pongid Phyogeny
Prosimian
Organisms are classified hierarchically5 Kingdoms: plants, animals, fungi, protists, bacteria
• Phylum Arthropoda
• Class Insecta
• Order Diptera
• Family
Drosophilidae
• Genus Drosophila
• Species
melanogaster
• Chordata
• Mammalia
• Primates
• “Hominidae” (Pongidae)
• Homo
• sapiens
Organisms are classified hierarchically5 Kingdoms: plants, animals, fungi, protists, bacteria
• Phylum Arthropoda
• Class Insecta
• Order Diptera
• Family
Drosophilidae
• Genus Drosophila
• Species
melanogaster
• Chordata
• Mammalia
• Primates
• “Hominidae” (Pongidae)
• Homo
• sapiens
(the “sap”)
Population Genetics: Human Migration
Population Genetics: p + q + r = 1, p2 + (q2 + pq) + (r2 + pr) + qr
Humans could have been stewards of Earth and all its many denizens,
microbes, plants, fungi, and animals. We have the ability to have
been God-like. Instead, for a short-sighted and selfish transient
population boom, we became the Scourge of the planet. We wiped
out and usurped vast tracts of natural habitat. We ate any other
species that was edible and depleted all Earth’s multitude of natural
resources. In a single century, humans burned fossil fuels that took
millions of years to form.
Humans fouled the atmosphere, despoiled the land, and poisoned the
waters, making the planet uninhabitable even to ourselves.
We trashed the life support systems of this,
our one and only Spaceship, planet Earth.
The disparity between what humans
could have been versus the pitiful
creatures we actually managed to
become is tragic and unforgivable.
If only more people would live up to
their full potential!
Excerpts from Homer Smith (1952) “Man and His Gods”
and Lord Earl of Balfour (1895) “Foundations of Belief”Man did not have forever to harness the forces of the sun and stars. The
Sun was an elderly light, long past the turbulent heat of youth, and would
some day join the senile class of once-luminiferous bodies. In some
incredibly remote time a chance collision might blow it up again into
incandescent gas and start a new local cosmic cycle, but of man there
would be no trace. In Balfours's terms, he “will go down into the pit, and
all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this
obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the
universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. ‘Imperishable
monuments’ and ‘immortal deeds,’ death itself, and love stronger than
death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that IS be
better or be worse for all that labour, genius, devotion and suffering of
man have striven through countless generations to effect.” (Italics added)
Greenhouse Effect
Global warming
– Ocean temperatures and acidity
– Sea levels rising
– Glaciers and ice caps melting
• CO2 pollution of the air
– Burning oil, deforestation
• Greenhouse gases cause warming
• Water vapor, H2O
• Carbon dioxide, CO2
• Nitrous Oxide, N2O N=N=O
• Methane, CH4 = 25 molecules CO2
• Trifluoromethyl Sulfur Pentaflouride, SF5CF3
= 18,000 molecules CO2 (half life = 1,000 years)
AVERAGE global temperatures are increasing.
2013 396 ppm
James Hansen
Science, 1431 (2005); 308 James Hansen, et al.
1884Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!
1916Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!
1948Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!
1980Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!
2012Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!
1.74 times the area of Texas
Warming stresses ecosystems• Coral reefs, tundra, Arctic
3.5 kilometers per year.
2030
The Big Apple finally goes under