Chapter 15: Phylogenies and a Brief History of Life
- What is a phylogeny and how does it relate to a phylogenetic tree?
- In terms of phylogenies, why are fossils so incredibly valuable?
- In a phylogenetic tree, be able to identify the following and what they represent: branch, node, terminal node.
- How do the two approaches of estimating phylogenies differ: the phenetic approach vs. the cladistics approach?
- What is a synapomorphy?
- What is a clade?
- What principle of logic is phylogenetics based?
- What assumption does phylogenetic parsimony make?
- Parsimony suggests that the best phylogenetic tree _____.
- Which phylogenetic approach is primarily based on synapomorphies?
- Which phylogenetic approach is primarily based on computed statistics, typically from DNA?
- What is the difference between homology and homoplasy?
- What is the underlying cause of homology?
- What is convergent evolution? Give an example.
- How do you know two species have evolved convergently?
- What is the underlying cause of homoplasy?
- What does the story of whale evolution teach us about parsimony?
- What are fossils? How did they form?
- What kind of organisms are most likely to be fossilized?
- What kind of organisms are least likely to be fossilized?
- What the difference between: intact fossils, compression fossils, cast fossils, and permineralized fossils?
- Explain the following limitations of the fossil record: habitat bias, taxonomic bias, temporal bias, and abundance bias.
- Put the geological time periods from smallest to largest: eras, eons, periods.
- List the eons in order from oldest to youngest.
- What three eras are in the Precambrian Eon, in order?
- As far as we know, how old is the Earth?
- As far as we know, when did life begin on Earth?
- How do we date rocks?
- What was the atmosphere like in the Precambrian Eon?
- What was life like in the Precambrian Eon?
- What the main determinant of the Precambrian Eon? What defines the boundary between the Precambrian and the Phanerozoic?
- What event started the Hadean Eon?
- What events happened during the Hadean Eon?
- What marks the transition from the Hadean Eon to the Archaean Eon?
- What marks the transition from the Archaean Eon to the Proterozoic Eon?
- What is the first chemical evidence we have of life on Earth?
- What is the first physical evidence we have of life on Earth?
- Why was the oxygenation of ocean and the atmosphere so important for life on Earth?
- How is it theorized that aerobic respiration came to be in eukaryotic organisms?
- What marks the transition from the Precambrian Eon to the Phanerozoic Eon?
- What eon did the moon form?
- What eon did liquid water form on Earth?
- What eon did the Earth formation complete?
- What eon did the first oceans appear?
- What eon did the Earth experience heavy bombardment from large asteroids?
- What eon did the origin of life appear?
- What eon did photosynthetic cells appear?
- What eon did the first evidence of oxygenic photosynthesis appear?
- What eon did first cyanobacteria appear?
- What eon did the first eukaryotic organisms appear?
- What eon did the lichen-like organism appear?
- What eon do we have the first evidence of sexual structures? What type of organism?
- What eon did the oceans become completely oxygenated?
- What eon did the first animals appear? What were they?
- What major life forms first appeared during the Cambrian Explosion?
- Why is the Cambrian Explosion so important?
- Why did Darwin struggle to explain the events of the Cambrian Explosion with his theory of natural selection?
- What is the theory of punctuated equilibrium? (and who came up with it)?
- What are three possible causes of the Cambrian Explosion?
- Know the fossil evidence for the Cambrian Explosion. What type of fossils existed in the following sites and what are their relative temporal relationships: Doushantuo, Ediacara Hills, and the Burgess Shale.
- What is the largest extinction event (other than current times) in the history of Earth?
- What percentage of marine species went extinct in the Permian-Triassic extinction? Terrestrial species?
- What are the possible causes of the Permian-Triassic extinction?
- Why did the Permian-Triassic extinction cause a greater decline in marine species, compared with terrestrial species?
- What happened in the Mesozoic Era?
- What happened during the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction? What is the culprit? What evidence supports this?
- From an animal perspective, the Cenozoic Era is known as the Age of the ____.
- What type of plants came to dominate during the Cenozoic?
- Insect pollination is a mutualistic relationship that blossomed during which era? (You get it…blossomed!!!)