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Also Try Human Evolution Books Darwin, Charles - Origin of Species (Talk Origins - Darwin) Provides the book that started the controversy about the origin of species and the theory of evolution. 9-02 Lesson Plans Adaptation and Evolution Lesson (British Columbia Ministry of Education) Provides a lesson on adaptation and evolution for the 11th grade level. The materials are called an Integrated Resource Package. 2-01 News -03-15-05 Scientists Test Evolution (ABC News) "Scientists are bringing the past to life by hatching eggs once thought to be dead and producing colonies of animals as they existed decades ago." 4-05 -04-05-06 "Missing Link" Between Fish and Land Animals Found (TimesOnline.co.uk) "An evolutionary missing link that was among the first fish to leave the sea and walk on land has been unearthed in the Canadian Arctic." "The fossil discovery illuminates a chapter in the history of life on Earth that was essential to the ultimate emergence of human beings. Tiktaalik roseae, which lived about 375 million years ago, has features that blur the distinction between fish and terrestrial limbed creatures." 04-06 -04-05-06 New Fossils Help Fill Gap Between Water and Land Animals (ABC News) "Fossils of a 375 million year old species of ancient fish found north of the Arctic Circle fill an evolutionary gap in the transition between water and land animals, scientists said on Wednesday." "Remains of the new species named Tiktaalik roseae were found encased in frozen rock. It has the fins and scales of a fish but its crocodile-like skull, neck and ribs resemble those of a land animal." 04-06 -04-16-07 Ability to Bite Evolved from Fish (MSNBC News) "The ability of ferocious land animals to bite prey evolved in ancient fish, a new study finds." 04-07 -04-16-07 Mites Regain Mating Ability After Losing It (MSNBC News) "Their calculations show the sexual Crotoniidae evolved from the asexual Camisiidae, the first known reversal to sexuality from asexuality within the animal kingdom. (The only other known such reversal is a plant, the mouseear hawkweed, or Hieracium pilosella.)" "The Crotoniidae and the Camisiidae are types of mites known as oribatids, where parthenogenesis is unusually widespread, seen in nearly one-tenth of the roughly 10,000 known oribatid species." 04-07 -08-03-07 Only 10% of Life on Earth Discovered (MSNBC News) " 'We’ve only touched the surface of understanding animal life,' said entomologist Brian Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences. 'We’ve discovered just 10 percent of all living things on this planet.' " 08-07 -12-11-05 Life Began in Space? (Scientific American) "Louis Allamandola and his colleagues at the NASA Ames Research Center have created primitive cells of a sort—empty, two-layer membranes (see image)—from elementary chemicals, exposed to conditions like those in interstellar clouds. 'Scientists believe the molecules needed to make a cell's membrane, and thus for the origin of life, are all over space,' Allamandola says. 'This discovery implies that life could be everywhere in the universe.' " 12-05 -12-11-05 New Theory Rejects Single-Ancestor Doctrine (Scientific American) "Instead of one universal evolutionary tree, picture a three-trunk stand sharing a communal root system. A new theory of cellular evolution published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences rejects Charles Darwin’s Doctrine of Common Descent—the idea that all organisms are derived from a single primordial ancestor. Instead, Carl Woese of the University of Illinois-Champaign proposes that the three cell types that comprise life on earth arose from three forms of proto cells that swam together in a dense genetic soup, freely sharing their DNA." "Indeed, such DNA swapping was the driving force in the evolution of unicellular organisms, Woese argues. Biologists have traditionally credited this so-called horizontal gene transfer with just a minor role in cellular evolution. But Woese asserts that only by sharing their genes—or evolutionary inventions, as he calls them—could simple cellular organizations have given rise to more complex cell designs. In the beginning, he says, primitive cells 'did not have stable genealogical records.' But eventually, these lines—including the three that spawned all extant life forms—reached what Woese terms the "Darwinian threshold," the point at which a lineage matures to genetic stability. Here the cellular organization became fixed, leading to a traceable cell line via reproduction. 'Crossing a Darwinian threshold leads to a more solidified, organized cellular design,' he explains." 12-05 Origin of Tetrapods (Scientific American) "As tetrapods ventured onto shore, they encountered challenges that no vertebrate had ever faced before--it was not just a matter of developing legs and walking away. Land is a radically different medium from water, and to conquer it, tetrapods had to evolve novel ways to breathe, hear, and contend with gravity--the list goes on. Once this extreme makeover reached completion, however, the land was theirs to exploit." 12-05 Origin of Tetrapods - Ichthyostega (Cambridge University) "The original ‘four-legged’ fish: the first Devonian tetrapod to be found." 12-05 Papers Beginning Life on Earth (AmericanScientist.org - de Duve) "The chemical evolution leading to cellular life on earth almost four billion years ago likely passed through a stage where RNA alone performed all of the functions of the modern macromolecules RNA, DNA and protein. However the so-called RNA world was itself too complex to evolve directly from organic molecules found on the prebiotic earth. More likely, the RNA world emerged from and was supported by a primitive sort of metabolism fueled by the bonds in sulfur-containing compounds called thioesters." 12-03 Biogeochemical Evolution (Chem1.com) "Oxygen is poisonous to all forms of life in the absence of enzymes that can reduce the highly reactive byproducts of oxidation and oxidative metabolism (peroxides, superoxides, etc.). All organic compounds are thermodynamically unstable in the presence of oxygen; carbon-carbon double bonds in lipids are subject to rapid attack. Prebiotic chemical evolution leading to the development of biopolymers was possible only under the reducing, anoxic conditions of the primitive atmosphere." 11-07 Birds (UCMP) Provides a study of the evolution of birds. Debate on the Chemical Origins of Life (LiveScience.com) "Instead of complex molecules, life started with small molecules interacting through a closed cycle of reactions, Shapiro argues in the June issue of the Quarterly Review of Biology. These reactions would produce compounds that would feed back into the cycle, creating an ever-growing reaction network." 01-07 Early Lice Came from Cousins (Nature.com) "Our ancestors may have caught nits from their primitive cousins." "Humankind's inexorable spread across the globe may have had an unwelcome side-effect - it brought us face to face with our ancient hominid relatives just long enough to catch their head lice. Researchers have discovered that there are two distinct lineages of modern lice, one of which presumably evolved on the scalps of another human species before making the jump to our own." 10-04 Essay: Why Historians Have a Stake in the Debate Over Evolution (History News Network) " As any newspaper reader knows, the American public has little regard for the theory of evolution. Despite its nearly universal acceptance among scientists worldwide, both the president of the United States and the Senate majority leader—an MD—favor the teaching of a competing, unscientific (indeed, antiscientific) theory known as 'Intelligent Design' as a counterpoint to evolution in the public schools." 9-05 Evolution - Concept and Examples (Athro, Limited) Provides an explanation of evolution as fact and theory. Also provides some examples. 12-00 Evolution - Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science (National Academy Press) Provides a rationale for why evolution must be taught as part of teaching about science and the scientific method, despite controversy. Includes examples on how to approach the topic and presents facts used in teaching about evolution as part of scientific inquiry. 5-00 Evolution - Theory and History (UCMP) Includes a history of different theories of evolution, organized by author, period, and subject. Evolution Concepts (PBS.org) Provides papers on change, extinction, survival, and other key concepts of evolution. 6-02 Evolution Theory (Talk Origins) Provides key elements of evolution theory and arguments by creationists against the evidence provided. 9-02 Evolutionary Biology (Evonet.edu) "The unity, diversity, and adaptive characteristics of organisms are consequences of evolutionary history, and can be understood fully only in this light. The science of evolutionary biology is the study of the history of life and of the processes that lead to its unity and diversity. Evolutionary biology sheds light on phenomena studied in the fields of molecular biology, developmental biology, physiology, behavior, paleontology, ecology, and biogeography, complementing these disciplines' study of biological mechanisms with explanations based on history and adaptation. Throughout the biological sciences, the evolutionary perspective provides a useful, often indispensable framework for organizing and interpreting observations and for making predictions. As was emphasized in a recent report from the United States National Academy of Sciences 37, biological evolution is 'the most important concept in modern biology – a concept essential to understanding key aspects of living things.' " 9-05 Evolutionary Taxonomy (About.com - Christensen) Provides a short explanation on how fossils are classified. Uses technical terminology appropriate for high school level students or above. 2-01 Evolutionary Timeline (TalkOrigins.org) Provides a timeline starting 4,600 million years ago. 11-07 Genetics Help With the Study of Fast Evolution of Crabs (National Geographic Society - Krause) Describes how the rapid evolution of the Jamaican tree crab was studied with the help of genetic material. 1-02 Gould, John Jay (MSNBC - Dateline) Discusses the contributions of the paleontologist to evolution theory. 5-02 Horse Evolution (TalkOrigins.org - Hunt) Provides evidence on the evolution of horses. (No pictures are included.) "A Question for Creationists: Creationists who wish to deny the evidence of horse evolution should careful consider this: how else can you explain the sequence of horse fossils? Even if creationists insist on ignoring the transitional fossils (many of which have been found), again, how can the unmistakable sequence of these fossils be explained? Did God create Hyracotherium, then kill off Hyracotherium and create some Hyracotherium-Orohippus intermediates, then kill off the intermediates and create Orohippus, then kill off Orohippus and create Epihippus, then allow Epihippus to 'microevolve' into Duchesnehippus, then kill off Duchesnehippus and create Mesohippus, then create some Mesohippus-Miohippus intermediates, then create Miohippus, then kill off Mesohippus, etc.....each species coincidentally similar to the species that came just before and came just after?" 02-06 Logic - Uses and Misuses of Logic (Theatres of Learning - Dalby and Stewart) Provides types of logic and misuses of logic, with the theory of evolution as the example of how logic can be used and misused. 9-02 Mammals - Evolution (EnchantedLearning) Provides a description of the evolution of mammals and includes links to key changes. 3-00   Timeline of Evolution (Wikipedia.org) Provides a history going back to when life first appeared on earth. 03-06 Whale Evolution (EnchantedLearning.com) Includes a description of the evolution of the whale. 10-00 Whales - Evolution (Thewissen) Describes whale evolution and includes early forms of the whale, including Pakicetidae, Ambulocetidae, Remingtonocetidae, Protocetidae, Dorudontidae, and Basilosauridae. 5-02 Research Evolution - Research on Mechanisms (Nature - Gee) Provides results of research to understand how species diverge over time. 5-00

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