Jared Diamond uses a variety of resources to answer Yali’s question. He uses radio carbon evidence to show when and where certain plants or animals were…
Possums, from populations with exposure to this vegetation, are particularly tolerant to fluoroacetate. However, the level of tolerance varies among the different populations of each species, depending on the degree to which the toxic plants were present in their microhabitat. The brush-tailed possum (T. vulpecula) from Western Australia was found to be nearly 150 times more resistant to fluoroacetate intoxication in vivo than the same species from South Australia. Both possums are capable of de-fluorinating fluoroacetate at similar rates by a glutathione-dependent enzymic mechanism resulting in the formation of free fluoride ion and S-carboxymethylcysteine. Glutathione was also capable of partial protection against the toxic effects of fluoroacetate in vitro by a further unelucidated mechanism.…
* The period between 4.0 and 3.5 billion years ago marked the emergence of life on our planet.…
• Medes settled in the northwest and came under the influence of the ancient centers in Mesopotamia and Urartu.…
is the emergence of new human ancestors, first, in the form of a 6- to 7-million-year-old skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis - known as Toumai, in northern Chad in 2002.…
Rome’s location contributed to its success in unifying Italy and all the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Agriculture was essential to Rome and was the source of most wealth. Social status, political privilege, and fundamental values were related to land ownership. The heads of families who were able to acquire a large profit of land were members of the Senate—“Council of Elders” that played a central role in Roman politics. The Republic was not a democracy in the modern sense. In Rome, the votes of the wealthy classes counted for more than the votes of poor citizens. Individuals of separate classes came together in ties of obligation, such as the patron/client relationship. Rome’s success in creating a huge empire released forces that eventually destroyed the Republican system of government. Octavian eliminated all enemies and reconstructed the Roman system of government. This period following the Republic is called the Principate. Augustus, one of the many names given to Octavian, became the name by which he is best known. Augustus’s understanding of human nature enabled him to manipulate Roman society. During his reign Egypt, parts of the Middle East, and Central Europe were added to the empire. Augustus had allied himself with the equites; Italian merchants and landowners second in wealth and social status. They helped run the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire of the first three centuries was an “urban” empire. Trade was greatly enhanced by the pax romana guaranteed by the Romans. Romanization—the spread of the Latin language and Roman way of life—was strongest in the western provinces. During this period of tranquility and success, many waited for the arrival of “the Messiah,” or Jesus, a young Jew. Paul, a Jew from the Greek city of Tarsus in southeast Anatolia, threw his talent and energy into spreading the word of Jesus. Surviving pieces of roads, walls, aqueducts and buildings are evidence of the engineering expertise of the ancient Romans. The third…
Happen? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174…
Major Trends in Hominin Evolution are diet, cultural evolution, encephalization, language and speech Diet; In addition to forcing changes in locomotion that led to walking upright, the increasingly dry climate of east Africa over the last six million years forced changes in the diet of early hominins from the soft fruits of the tropical rain forest to the increasingly fibrous and tough foods available in open habitats.Early hominin diets are reconstructed partly based on the surface areas of the molars and the cross-sectional area of the body of the lower jaw (Collard…
Author: Hornsby Edition: 5th Copyright: 2011 Publisher: Pearson Education ISBN: 9780321708960 New: $214.75 Used: $161.25 New Rental: N/A Used Rental: N/A Choice Fossils and the History of Life History of Life Author: Cowen Edition: 4th…
While one tends to have the general idea as to what’s happening around the world, it isn’t until someone comes around and tells you exactly what’s going on that you become truly aware. This thought was the first to cross my mind while I was reading The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert. Before getting into the details of this book review, I would like to preface it by saying that before beginning this class I had an idea of what was happening around the globe. I was not so uninformed as to say that I didn’t know the climate was changing and species were gradually disappearing, but rather I was unaware as to just how quickly this was taking place. I can say that in the back of my mind there has…
Anthropocene starts when people living on the planet do certain actions and they have a major international effect on the planets geology and environment. Individuals are living in every continent here on planet earth. Each continent affects the earth in many ways. Individuals living here on earth have affected everything here indirectly or directly. Therefore, all the changes that happen whether catastrophic or not are the responsibilities of the inhabitants. No one can pin point the time when the changes to the planet began and several researchers state that it is not imaginable find out when it started. The scientist also believes no lone action could to tell this period apart from the preceding one. It is not important when Anthropocene…
Beren Robinson performed remarkable field study of threespine sticklebacks. These fish closely relate to ecology and evolution. The researchers original findings are different than that of Robinson’s field study. His hypothesis states that the threespine sticklebacks varied phenotypes are the handiwork of natural selection supporting the discrepancy in the population. Diet and the environmental conditions are the variables found in this study. The ecologists also used evidence and observation to quantify results by using information from other studies and experiments. Robinson’s study relates to evolution and natural selection, both of these play an important part in ecology. In Robinson’s study he should change the life span, growth rate and the body size to be able to understand the evolution of the threespine stickleback species of fish.…
Some may ask what the Anthropocene is. Before this moment, I had never heard of it. The Anthropocene is very important because it is able to show just how humans have impacted the earth, and how we have changed it. As humans, we are pushing the wildlife into smaller areas as we create new homes, and disrupt their habitat. The earth is facing its sixth extinction, and studies show that humans are to blame. This does not mean every single animal species has suffered a loss of 25%. Some are impacted more than others. Humans are to blame, as the killing of animals, and change of habitat are two major factors in the decline of species. Not only are animals being killed, but we are also polluting the air we breathe. The most familiar change according…
step of the cycle is then to turn into an adult. The adult frog lives on land and eat insects . It…
The new frontier for fossil discoveries is China. Here Scientist are able to take evidence for evolutionary theories. The fossil record contains many well-documented examples of the transition from one species into another, as well as the origin of new physical features. Evidence from the fossil record is unique, because it provides a time perspective for understanding the evolution of life on Earth. David Attenborough embarks on an epic 500-million-year journey to unravel the incredible rise of the vertebrates. The evolution of animals with backbones is one of the greatest stories in natural history. To tell this story, David presents explosive new fossil evidence from China, a region he has long dreamt of exploring and the frontier of modern paleontological research. In the Time period known as the Cambrian, in which the land was still bare and lifeless but under water it was exploding into a multitude of forms. The first known vertebrate fossils, found at the Chengjiang locality in China, date back to the early Cambrian. Vertebrates appear to have radiated in the late Ordovician, about 450 million years ago. The major animal groups we know today were appearing on the planet for the very first time. They build their bodies of soft tissues and some even have a hard outhercase to protect their selves, but none had anything that resembled a backbone, and so they were called the invertebrands. But there is an exception, the Myllokunmingia, the first known common ancestor of all vertebrates. Using its early back-bone to move around in a totally new way, this animal diversified over millions of years to create the spectacular variety of backboned creatures we see on our planet today. A species was found as well in China that had a newly identified ‘missing link’; older fish have front fins but this one has another pair of back fins, or pelvic fins, granting much more swimming stability to the owner. Along with the jaw,…