Darwin Theory Of Evolution

1. Darwin Theory of Evolution helped come up with the conclusion of natural selection and shared ancestry. Meaning that all species arise and develop through inherited variations, increasing the species ability to survive, reproduce, and compete. The primary example for this theory was his findings of the finches on the Galapagos island. He noticed that these finches were similar to other species that were on different islands. This helped him make up the following conclusions; Evolution has occurred, splitting of single species into two or more species, and evolution change is gradual. Many people helped Darwin develop his ideas. The first person was Carolus Linnaeus, he established the modern system of taxonomy that helped group species based

Then, there was Alfred Russel Wallace, he had a major influence on Darwin theory. Wallace, did the same thing Darwin did, he went on a voyage but he went to different islands and he noticed the same thing Darwin noticed in other species but he could not exactly put a name on his findings, so he sent his work to Darwin. That is when Darwin came up with natural selection and he wrote his book and years later Wallace wrote a book called Darwinism.

2. Earth was formed 4.568 billion years ago and early earth consisted organic molecules; hydrogen compound, methane, water vapor, and ammonia. Life as we know it today did not exist. Oxygen did not come into the atmosphere until 2.5 billion years ago, however cellular life came about 3.5 billion years ago. There are multiple origins of life that came about at different times but visible life happened in the Phanerozoic Eon. During the Phanerozoic Eon, there were about 8 major evolutionary transitions because within the 8 transitions there were five major extinctions. The first major evolutionary transition was the Cambrian, which was approximately 541 million years ago. This era had many lineages of living animals. There were trilobites

A phylogeny is the branch of biology that deals with phylogenies, also it is a visual representation of evolutionary history and enable to reconstruct a phylogeny is to be able to analyze the similarities in characteristics of different organisms. Cladistics is a classification of animals and plants according to the characteristics that these organisms have in common. The more characteristics they share, the better you can make the conclusion that they have a common ancestor. A monophyletic group is an organism(s) that comes from a common ancestor that is not shared with any other. Synapomorphy is a characteristic in an ancestral species and shared by their evolutionary successor. The principle of parsimony is that it helps explain the relationship between species in the form of a phylogenetic tree. Characters used to understand the transition from tetrapods to fish is the phylogenetic tree because they share multiple similarities between each other. Coelacanths which are fish are the closet living relative to tetrapod’s. Also phylogeny and cladistics play a role in distinguishing between dinosaurs and birds. These two species are one in the same they share many characteristics such their skull structure and they are both considered reptiles and scientist still say that birds are living dinosaurs. The character that plays a role between whales and artiodactyls is synapomorphy because of the morphology that proves whales and hippopotamuses are closely related. Lastly,