Big Bang 13.7-13.8 billion years ago

Life arose 3.5 billion years ago

Anaerobic versus aerobic bacteria, fermentation, respiration

Photosynthetic prokaryotes, origin of oxygen atmosphere

Endosymbiosis: origin of eukaryotes, plants, fungi, and animals

Reticulate Evolution: Mitochondria, Chloroplasts

Phylogenetic Systematics = cladistics, clades

Importance of shared derived characteristics (synapomorphies)

Monophyletic groups (Polyphyletic, Paraphyletic)

Sister groups, outgroups

Rooting phylogenetic trees

Infer/identify ancestral states — polarize character state changes

Hierarchical classification, Latin binomial nomenclature

Pongid (“Hominid”) phylogeny, blood group types

Broca’s Area

MusicEmotions

Mabuya Egernia CtenotusEremia- scincus

Pongid Phyogeny

Prosimian

Pongid Phyogeny

Prosimian

Organisms are classified hierarchically5 Kingdoms: plants, animals, fungi, protists, bacteria

• Phylum Arthropoda

• Class Insecta

• Order Diptera

• Family

Drosophilidae

• Genus Drosophila

• Species

melanogaster

• Chordata

• Mammalia

• Primates

• “Hominidae” (Pongidae)

• Homo

• sapiens

Organisms are classified hierarchically5 Kingdoms: plants, animals, fungi, protists, bacteria

• Phylum Arthropoda

• Class Insecta

• Order Diptera

• Family

Drosophilidae

• Genus Drosophila

• Species

melanogaster

• Chordata

• Mammalia

• Primates

• “Hominidae” (Pongidae)

• Homo

• sapiens

(the “sap”)

Population Genetics: Human Migration

Population Genetics: p + q + r = 1, p2 + (q2 + pq) + (r2 + pr) + qr

Humans could have been stewards of Earth and all its many denizens,

microbes, plants, fungi, and animals. We have the ability to have

been God-like. Instead, for a short-sighted and selfish transient

population boom, we became the Scourge of the planet. We wiped

out and usurped vast tracts of natural habitat. We ate any other

species that was edible and depleted all Earth’s multitude of natural

resources. In a single century, humans burned fossil fuels that took

millions of years to form.

Humans fouled the atmosphere, despoiled the land, and poisoned the

waters, making the planet uninhabitable even to ourselves.

We trashed the life support systems of this,

our one and only Spaceship, planet Earth.

The disparity between what humans

could have been versus the pitiful

creatures we actually managed to

become is tragic and unforgivable.

If only more people would live up to

their full potential!

Excerpts from Homer Smith (1952) “Man and His Gods”

and Lord Earl of Balfour (1895) “Foundations of Belief”Man did not have forever to harness the forces of the sun and stars. The

Sun was an elderly light, long past the turbulent heat of youth, and would

some day join the senile class of once-luminiferous bodies. In some

incredibly remote time a chance collision might blow it up again into

incandescent gas and start a new local cosmic cycle, but of man there

would be no trace. In Balfours's terms, he “will go down into the pit, and

all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this

obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the

universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. ‘Imperishable

monuments’ and ‘immortal deeds,’ death itself, and love stronger than

death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that IS be

better or be worse for all that labour, genius, devotion and suffering of

man have striven through countless generations to effect.” (Italics added)

Greenhouse Effect

Global warming

– Ocean temperatures and acidity

– Sea levels rising

– Glaciers and ice caps melting

• CO2 pollution of the air

– Burning oil, deforestation

• Greenhouse gases cause warming

• Water vapor, H2O

• Carbon dioxide, CO2

• Nitrous Oxide, N2O   N=N=O

• Methane, CH4 = 25 molecules CO2

• Trifluoromethyl Sulfur Pentaflouride, SF5CF3

= 18,000 molecules CO2 (half life = 1,000 years)

AVERAGE global temperatures are increasing.

2013 396 ppm

James Hansen

Science, 1431 (2005); 308 James Hansen, et al.

1884Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!

1916Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!

1948Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!

1980Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!

2012Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!

1.74 times the area of Texas

Warming stresses ecosystems• Coral reefs, tundra, Arctic

3.5 kilometers per year.

2030

The Big Apple finally goes under