Bighorn Rams

In Chapter 10, Carroll goes over one location example, Wyoming, one tree example and two animal examples, the codfish and bighorn ram. I will first start with the state of Wyoming.
Carroll starts by uses Wyoming and the fossils found on the site to make his theory that the “fittest” is only conditional. Wyoming is a droughty state where the climate makes water evaporate fast. Today it is hard to imagine that Wyoming was once a tropical forest. One discovers is the variety of fossils found in Wyoming that includes fishes and turtles. There was also a fossil of palm trees too. Palm trees require a moist and warm tropical climate to survive. The palm trees survived temperature rose to about 10 degrees higher than before and created an environment

Fishermen over fished the cod population till 99.9% was gone. Fishing laws were placed to stop fishing in order to allow for the Cod population to occur. Carroll states even though there were laws to protect the codfish but the effect of overfishing still is present. Overfishing made the overall codfish size smaller.
The final example Carroll uses is the Bighorn Ram that resides in Wyoming. The large horns have been a selective advantage in the course of the Bighorn history because they aid in battles and mating. The large horns provide a weapon when fighting other rams and many fights occur over a mate. The larger horned Rams are more likely to find a mate because of the size of their horn and with a higher dominance rank they have a higher success in mating. The problem is that human now hunt the bighorn ram for their horns. Now the current population of the Bighorn Ram has small horns and body size.
Both in the over fishing of the Codfish and the hunting of the Bighorn, human has a great impact on them. In essence, created an evolutionary path that is only for the fittest in a given environment. The climate had a great impact on the palm tree. The change in climate caused the palm tree to disappear and give rise to more fitter plant