ANTH 100A Lecture Notes - Transitional Fossil, Species Ii, Selective Breeding
Document Summary
Evidence for evolution: evidence for change through time, fossil record, extinctions, transitional forms. E. g. whales: changes in living organisms, vestigial trait, artificial selection, evolution descent with modification . All organisms have a common ancestor linnanean hierarchy, tree of life . Two species in a family are more closely related than those in different families in the same class. The environment changes traits in a population over time/over generations (allele frequency changes in a population: natural selection the mechanism of evolution. Natural selection occurs through interaction between environment and existing genetic variation in a population. It causes a change in the population resulting in increase in those better suited for survival. Variable population because of adaptation of population to environment variation + selection = adaptation. Extinct species can be noticed in fossils containing shells, bones, leaves, bird tracks, dung, etc. This was used as evidence by darwin who then said that species were not static, immutable entities.