Essays on Paleontology

Improved scientific understanding in recent years has shown that humans are the major causes of climate change on the planet. A report released by IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 2014 reports that it is “extremely likely” that the dominant cause of global warming in the 20th Century is the influence of humans. Human activities over the last two hundred years, since the beginning of industrialization, have caused a building up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and as a result, the Greenhouse Effect (a natural phenomenon which regulates the temperature of the earth) has increased ...

Part 1 Video Critique

In the first part of this assignment, the video chosen to do the critique is an Amateur video of the anatomy of the Archaeopteryx (http://bit.ly/1vImeVp). The Archaeopteryx was an animal that lived about 150 million years ago, in the late Jurassic period. The video starts with several images of various fossils of Archaeopteryx. The narrator begins by citing Darwin’s theory of evolution and states that this theory “predicted that we could find fossils of intermediate forms: creatures that bridge the gaps between modern species”. Then, the narrator introduces the Archaeopteryx, and points out that this animal “ ...

Introduction

Evolution is the change animals and species undergo over time to adapt to certain environmental changes and eventually produce multiple descendent species. Evolution and natural selection are often taken as complimentary to each other. However, evolution, by definition, is a historical process of change, while natural selection is merely a mechanism that results in this change. Advances in technology and biology has thrown light on several causes and consequences of evolution. Some of the deepest understandings of evolution come from understanding fossils and examining phylogeny and from the study of natural selection. Evidences suggest that when natural selection is strong, the rate ...