BIOL 1202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Catastrophism, Insect Wing, Exponential Growth
Document Summary
Descent with modification: a darwinian view of life. The first convincing case of evolution was published by charles darwin in 1859: evolution is the transformation of the lifeforms on earth over time, genetic changes that can be passed on the generations, descent with modification. What kind of change: a change in the frequency of the alleles of the genes within a population. Mutation which creates a new allele that is favored. How much time: several generations for the organism, not all organisms have the same generation time. For bacteria => a day or two could be plenty. The differences between fossils and living species are great. A succession of organisms is seen in the fossil record. However, these results were not used to support evolution. A french anatomist (cuvier) founded the science of paleontology, the study of fossils in the late 1700"s and early 1800"s. Cuvier explained the layers of different species were caused by separate catastrophic events.
