UC Berkeley
Found 26 resources for the concept:
Similarities among existing organisms (including morphological, developmental, and molecular similarities) reflect common ancestry and provide evidence for evolution.
¿De donde vienen todas las especies de Madagascar?
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
- Advanced
- General
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Evo in the News article
Time: 30 minutes
Overview
Continuando la celebración del tema de Octubre en el Año de la Ciencia, las ciencias de la tierra y el planeta Tierra, la historia de este mes se centra en cómo la geografía y la geología han moldeado la evolución de la vida en uno de los lugares más singulares de la Tierra. Madagascar, la cuarta isla más grande del mundo, se encuentra en el Océano índico a varios cientos de kilómetros de la costa sureste de áfrica y constituye el hogar de una notable variedad de especies vegetales y animales, incluido el aye aye, la fossa, el camaleón y el árbol baobab...
A Strange Fish Indeed: The “Discovery” of a Living Fossil
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- Grant, Robert
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 50-90 min.
Overview
Through a series of fictionalized diary entries, this case recounts the 1939 discovery by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer (and identification by J.L.B. Smith) of a living coelacanth, a fish believed to have been extinct for 70 million years.
An Antipodal Mystery
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- Herreid, Clyde Freeman
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 1 to 2 hours, ideally split over multiple class periods
Overview
The discovery of the platypus had the scientific world in an uproar with its mammal-like and bird-like features. How was one to classify the platypus? This case study uses this issue to model the scientific process, with scientists arguing, debating, collecting more evidence, and revising their opinions as new data become available.
Chimpanzee Droppings Lead Scientists to Evolutionary Discovery
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- Kosal, Erica F.
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 1.5 to 2 hours
Overview
Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) is thought to be a precursor to HIV. This multi-part case study explores changes in SIV in different chimpanzee populations and how researchers use this information to test hypotheses about the origins of HIV.
Evo in the news: A fish of a different color
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
- General
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Evo in the News article
Time: 15 minutes
Overview
This news brief, from February 2006, describes how a mutated zebrafish gene may help us understand human evolution and the genes underlying human skin color. Humans and zebrafish both inherited the same pigmentation gene from their common ancestor.
Evo in the news: Fighting the evolution of malaria in Cambodia
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
- General
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Evo in the News article
Time: 30 minutes
Overview
This news brief from December 2009 focuses on one of the world's most deadly infectious diseases: malaria. Malaria is normally treatable, but now some strains are evolving resistance to our most effective drug. Find out how researchers and doctors are trying to control the evolution of the disease.
Evo in the news: One small fossil, one giant step for polar bear evolution
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
- Advanced
- General
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Evo in the News article
Time: 30 minutes
Overview
This news brief from April 2010 describes what scientists have learned by extracting DNA from a polar bear fossil more than 100,000 years old. Though the fossil itself was just a fragment of the skeleton -the lower left portion of the jaw, still containing a tooth- the DNA had a lot to say about polar bear evolution.
Evo in the news: Where did all of Madagascar’s species come from?
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
- Advanced
- General
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Evo in the News article
Time: 30 minutes
Overview
Recently, political unrest in Madagascar has threatened to set back the island's expanding conservation efforts, and criminals have taken advantage of the instability, looting protected forests for rare wood. This news story from October 2009 turns back the clock to consider the biogeographic processes that made Madagascar into a biodiversity hotspot in the first place.
Evo-devo
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
- Advanced
- General
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Tutorial
Time: 20 minutes
Overview
Understanding the process of development can help us understand how some major evolutionary changes occurred and why others did not.
Evolution and Phylogenetic Analysis
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- Wilfred A. Franklin
Resource type:
- Lab activity
Time: Two 3-hour sessions
Overview
In a flexible multisession laboratory, students investigate concepts of phylogenetic analysis at both the molecular and the morphological level. Students finish by conducting their own analysis on a collections skeletons using the Mesquite software.
Evolution connection: Photosynthesis 2
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
Time: 5 minutes
Overview
This short slide set explains uniformity and variation in the process of photosynthesis across all life using evolutionary history. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.
Evolution connection: The Krebs Cycle
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
Time: 5 minutes
Overview
This short slide set explains the uniformity of the Krebs cycle across all life using evolutionary theory. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.
Evolution connection: Transcription and translation
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
Time: 5 minutes
Overview
This short slide set relates the role of RNA in the processes of transcription and translation to RNA's evolutionary history and the remnants of the RNA world. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.
Evolution of human skin color
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: Seven to ten 50 minute class periods
Overview
Students examine evidence for the relationship between UV and melanin in other animals; investigate the genetic basis for constitutive skin color humans; learn to test for natural selection in mouse fur color; investigate how interactions between UV and skin color in humans can affect fitness; and explore data on migrations and gene frequency to show convergent evolution of skin color.
Eye Evolution
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Online activity or lab
Time: 45-60 minutes
Overview
This worksheet guides students through an interactive online module entitled Why the Eye? on the Understanding Evolution website. Students gain a better understanding of the different types of animal eyes and how natural selection can account for the evolution of a complex organ.
Hominid Cranium Comparison (The “Skulls” Lab)
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- ENSI
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: One to two class periods
Overview
Students describe, measure and compare cranial casts from contemporary apes, modern humans, and fossil hominids to discover some of the similarities and differences between these forms and to see the pattern leading to modern humans.
How are humans related to other primates?
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- Kalinowski, Steven
Resource type:
- Lab activity
Time: Two lab periods
Overview
In this two-part laboratory students analyze skull morphology and DNA sequences among primate species to answer one of the most meaningful questions in biology: How are humans related to other animals?
How boogieing birds evolved: The work of Kim Bostwick
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
- General
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Research profile
Time: 30 minutes
Overview
This research profile follows ornithologist Kim Bostwick through the jungles of Ecuador and the halls of museums as she investigates the evolution of an exotic bird's complex mating dance.
Investigating Common Descent: Formulating Explanations and Models
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- National Academy of Sciences
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: Two class periods
Overview
Students formulate explanations and models that simulate structural and biochemical data as they investigate the misconception that humans evolved from apes.
Mantis shrimp shoulder their evolutionary baggage and bluff
Grade Level(s):
- 6-8
- 9-12
- 13-16
- General
- Student
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Article
Time: 30 minutes
Overview
Like all organisms, mantis shrimp carry baggage from their evolutionary history. Find out how this baggage has coaxed them into a deadly bluffing game.
Monkey opsins
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- Evo-Ed
Resource type:
- Case study
Time: Two class periods
Overview
This case study in the form of a set of PowerPoint slides examines the evolution of trichromatic vision in old world monkeys.
Phylogenetics laboratory: Reconstructing evolutionary history
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- Kefyn Catley and Laura Novick
Resource type:
- Lab activity
Time: 3 hours
Overview
By examining specimens, students fill in a data matrix of animal taxa and complete exercises to learn about synapomorphies, mapping characters on a phylogeny, and assessing parsimony.
The great clade race: Zombie Edition
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- Martindale, Rowan and Goldsmith, David
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 30-50 minutes
Overview
This activity uses a simple puzzle to get students to use cladistic thinking without bogging them down with terminology.
Webcast: Fossils, genes, and embryos
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
- Advanced
- General
Source:
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Resource type:
- Video Lecture
Time: 60 minutes
Overview
In lecture three of a four part series, evolutionary biologist David Kingsley examines the original objections to Darwin's theory and shows how modern evidence supports the theory.
This lecture is available from Howard Hughes' BioInteractive website.
What does it mean to be human?
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 8 x 50-minute class periods
Overview
In this set of advanced lessons, students use different types of data to infer/interpret phylogenies among domains, within the vertebrates, and within primates while reflecting on how they answer the question "What do you think it means to be human?" and choose a characteristic that changed substantially in the human family tree to develop a scientific argument based on evidence for when the character evolved.
Why the eye?
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
- Advanced
- General
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Article
Time: 30-45 min
Overview
Eyes are something of an icon of evolution. How did such an integrated, multi-part adaptation evolve? While many different animals have complex eyes, untangling their evolutionary history reveals both remarkable diversity and surprising similarity.
