Transcript Evidence for Evolution - Mr. Blankenship's pages

The Evidence for
Evolution
SC State Science Education Standard B-5
Indicator 5.5 Exemplify scientific evidence in the fields of anatomy, embryology, biochemistry, and
paleontology that underlies the theory of biological evolution.
Anatomy
The greater the number of shared
homologous structures between two
species, the more closely the species
are related.
Paleontology
Paleontology (the study of ancient life) is
another tool that scientists use to
reconstruct the history of evolution.
Paleontologists collect and analyze fossils
to create a geologic time scale of when
various organisms first appeared on Earth.
Embryology
Embryology (the study of the embryonic
development of organisms) provides
another type of data for reconstructing
the evolutionary history of organisms by
comparing the anatomies of their
embryos in various stages of
development.
Biochemistry
Comparing the similarities in the genes
and gene products (proteins) of
organisms (through the study of
biochemistry) provides some of the most
promising information concerning the
evolutionary history of organisms.
Background photo: http://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/media/images/trilo_h.jpg
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/images/vert_tree.gif
Phylogeny
Using evidence gathered from the fields
of anatomy, embryology, biochemistry,
and paleontology, scientists develop
models of how groups of organisms are
related to each other.
Deb Whittington & Mark Davidson, 2007