EVOLUTION OF LIFE • The emergence of vertebrates

species
Evolution - It concerns with the origin
and the natural processes of life. It is
one of the most well-known subjects in
the field of Biology.
• The growth of vascular plants
• The diversification of fishes and
amphibians.
The Ordovician Period ushered in
significant changes in plate tectonics,
climate, and biological systems. Rapid
seafloor spreading at oceanic ridges
fostered some of the highest global
sea levels in the Phanerozoic Eon.

GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE

To chart the history of the Earth,
geologists have developed a
geologic time scale that consists of
four eras: Large expanses of several continents
Precambrian became flooded with shallow seas,
Paleozoic and mound-type coral reefs were very
Mesozoic common. Fishes were widespread.
Cenozoic Vascular plants began to colonize
coastal lowlands during the Silurian
Precambrian – This era in Earth’s history Period, whereas continental interiors
began 4.6 billion years ago and lasted remained essentially barren of life.
until 542 million years ago.
The Devonian, part of the
Involves 3 eons: Paleozoic era, is otherwise known as
Characterized by the formation of
• Hadean the planet, the first tectonic the Age of Fishes, as it spawned a
• Archean movements and the absence of remarkable variety of fish. The most
• Proterozoic life on Earth. formidable of them were the armored
The single-celled organisms and certain
placoderms, a group that first
marine mammals emerged marking the appeared during the Silurian with
beginning of life on earth. powerful jaws lined with bladelike
plates that acted as teeth.

Paleozoic Era – This era lasted around
542 million years to 250 million years
ago.
Cambrian explosion – an event
characterized by the migration of
marine animals onto land.
“Age of Crinoids”
The Mississippian Period represents the
last time limestone was deposited by
widespread seas on the North
American continent. Limestone is
composed of calcium carbonate from
marine organisms such as crinoids,
which dominated the seas during the
Mississippian Period.
Forests resulted in the later formation
of coal, which characterizes the
Pennsylvanian Period. Also
characteristic of Pennsylvanian time
was the diversification of amphibians
and insects. For example, insects with
non-folding wings appeared.
During the Permian period, the last
period of the era, Pangaea began to
drift apart, causing a major extinction
that wiped out the majority of life on
Earth. All the world's landmasses were
joined into a single continent that
spread from pole to pole.
Pangaea- The continent we now know
as North America was contiguous with
Africa, South America, and Europe.
They all existed as a single continent
called Pangaea.
Mesozoic Era
Lasting from approximately 250 million
years to 65 million years ago. This era
has been called “the age of
Dinosaurs”.The Mesozoic era involves
three period:
Triassic
Jurassic
Cretaceous
Triassic Period
- This era is popularly known as
the “Age of Reptiles” and for
good reason: reptiles, and
particularly dinosaurs, were the
dominant land-dwelling
vertebrate animals at the time
Jurrasic Period
- The Jurassic Period was a
golden time for dinosaurs,
which flourished for 180 million
years. Huge sauropod
herbivores (such as 87-foot [27-
meter] long Diplodocus) and
carnivores (such as 35-foot [11-
meter] long Allosaurus)
emerged. To get a sense of
how large these animals were,
imagine sprinting as fast as you
can.
Cretaceous Period
- During the Cretaceous,
accelerated plate collision
caused mountains to build
along the western margin of
North America. As these
mountains were rising, the Gulf
of Mexico basin subsided, and
seawater began to spread
northward into the expanding
western interior. Marine water
also began to flood from the
Arctic region.
Mass Extinction - The Mesozoic came
to an abrupt end 66 million years ago
in a dramatic extinction event. An
estimated 70 per cent of plant and
animal species perished.
Cenozoic Era
This ongoing era began around 65
million years ago. This was
characterized by the height of
the Ice Age, which saw the existence
of the wolly mammoth and the saber-
toothed tiger
Paleogene
- During the Paleogene the
continents drifted farther apart,
heading toward their modern
positions. Oceans widened the
gaps, Europe severed its last ties
with North America, and
Australia and Antarctica finally parted
ways
Neogene
- The Neogene Period started
with the replacement of vast
areas of forest by grasslands
and savannahs. New food
sources and niches on the
grasslands and savannahs
fostered further evolution of
mammals and birds. Whales
diversified in the seas, and
sharks reached their largest size
during the Miocene.
Quaternary Period
- The Quaternary Period is the
third and last of the three
periods of the Cenozoic Era.
You and I are living in this
period, which began only 2.58
million years ago. This is less than
0.1% of all of geologic time! A
thin layer of sediments
deposited during the
Quaternary covers much of the
Earth's land surface.
THEORIES ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF
LIFE
Anaximander (610-546
B.C.) - He suggested that
life evolved from slimes in
the ocean and migrated
eventually to drier,
terrestrial areas.
Xenophanes (570-480 B.C)
- He observed fossils and
came up with various
theories about the
evolution of life on earth.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C) - He
believed that animals
emerged from different
elements and an
animating force called
vital heat, or soul.
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)
- He developed a system of
classification for all identified
organisms during his time,
and was able to show an
evolutionary pattern among species
through this system
George-Louis Leclerc, Comte
de Buffon (1707-1788) - He
hypothesized that species
come from the same
ancestors instead of emerging
separately from one another.
Charles Bonnet (1720-1793) -
He believed that organisms
were climbing a “ladder of
life” through which animals
became more intelligent;
primates became human; and
humans became angels.
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
- He suggested that all life
came from a common
ancestor.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
(1744-1829) -He formulated
the theory of use and disuse
and the inheritance of
acquired traits.
Charles Darwin (1804-1882)-
He proposed the theory of
natural selection and
provided evidence for the
theory of common
ancestry.
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE
EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT – THE THEORY
OF NATURAL SELECTION
Erasmus Darwin- Suggested the idea
that animals evolved from a common
ancestor.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Formulated two theories about the
evolution of species:
1. The theories of use and disuse.
2. The inheritance of acquired
characteristics
The Theory of Use and Disuse
The limbs, organs, and behavior
or organisms are enhanced when
utilized more frequently for their
survival. Oppositely, when these
physical and behavioral
characteristics fall into disuse,
they either reduce in size,
decrease function or stop
evolving.
LAMARCKISM
The Theory of Inheritance and
Acquired Traits - The adaptation
developed by organisms during their
lifetime, such as the changes in their
physical and behavioral traits,become
genetically encoded and are passed
on to their offspring.
HMS Beagle – boat na gisakyan ni
charlez
DARWIN REALIZED THAT
Living organisms adapt to their
environment. This means that the way
they look, the way they behave, how
they are built, or their way of life makes
them suited to survive and reproduce
in their habitats.The changes in the
traits of a species can result in:
• The evolution of species
• The emergence of a new species
• The possibility of tracing the ancestry
of organisms
He synthesized unrelated facts
into a conceptual framework that
accounted for the diversity of life.
In this book, he described the
phenomenon of natural selection
as “Descent with modification”.
Darwin defined evolution as "descent
with modification," the idea that
species change over time, give rise to
new species, and share a common
ancestor.
Charles Lyell - He developed the
theory of uniformitarianism, which was
a significant
influence on the
formation of
Charles Darwin's
theory of
evolution. The
theory of
uniformitarianism
states that the processes by which
current geological features were
created were slow, steady, and
constant.
Thomas Malthus - He concluded that
as more offspring are born, a more
competitive nature would
arise. As more offspring
come into the
population, fewer
resources will be available
for the population. This
has the potential for
competition between
organisms for survival due
to lack of resources.
Alfred Wallace - Wallace supplied
Darwin with
birds for his
studies and
decided to seek
Darwin's help in
publishing his
own ideas on
evolution. He
sent Darwin his
theory in 1858,
which, to Darwin's shock, nearly
replicated Darwin's own.
James Hutton - James Hutton (1726 -
1797) is best known
for his important
contributions to the
science of geology
(uniformitarianism
and the great age
of the earth).
However, Hutton
was also the first
person to propose a mechanism of
natural selection to account for
evolutionary change over time.
ORIGIN OF LIFE ON EARTH
Abiogenesis – without, life, the origin
The idea that life arose from nonlife
more than 3.5 billion years ago on
Earth. Abiogenesis proposes that the
first life-forms generated were very
simple and through a gradual process
became increasingly complex.
RNA - Some scientists have theorized
that Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) was the
first molecule to evolve into an active
component of life, as it has the ability
to act as both genes and enzymes.
Harold Urey and Stanley Miller (1953)
- The primary significance of the
Miller-Urey experiment was that
the experiment significantly
proved that origin of life on the
planet Earth had occurred
because of the chemical
conditions or through
Abiogenesis. During the
investigation, the reactants that
were used were water,
methane, ammonia, and
hydrogen
Other views on the Origin of Life
1. Ocean Surface (Tidal Pools)
- This theory suggests that life
arose either form a tidepool,
pond or moist calyon primeval
Earth.Gases from volcanoes
were believer to have been
energized by ultraviolet light
from the sun of from electrical
discharges to form prebiotic
molecules in their froth.
2. Panspermia
- This theory, also known as
Cosmic Ancestry, suggests that
living organisms were seeded
on Earth by passengers aboard
comets and meteors.Such
incoming organisms would
have to survive the heat of re-
entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
3. Undersea Thermal Vents
- This is recently proposed theory,
which suggests that life have
arisen at ancient volcanic vents
on the seafloor.This environment
provides necessary gases,
energy, and possible sources of
catalysts such as metal
sulphides.
4. Endosymbiosis
- The American biologist Lyn
Margulis proposed that cell
organelles may have evolved
when a small prokaryote was
engulfed by a larger prokaryote
 and began to live symbiotically Isotopes - Atoms of the same
inside the larger cell. element (same number of
proton) but with different
number of neutrons.

EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION

1. Fossil Records
Fossils are remains of ancient
organisms whose corpses Earth’s Age - As the uranium in
escaped decay or rocks decays, it emits
decomposition subatomic particles and
and, after many years, became turns into lead at a constant
part of Earth’s crust. rate. Measuring the uranium-
A fossil may be the preserved tolead ratios in the oldest
bones or skin of the organisms rocks on Earth gave scientists an
themselves estimated age of the planet of
- Fossils may also be casts, which 4.6 billion years.
are impressions of organisms on
the sediment, or trace fossils, 2. Molecular Biology
which are marks made by the - Each of our proteins has a
organism during its lifetime. specific number of amino acids
- Fossilization of dead arranged in a specific order.
organisms occurs through Any difference that occurs in
the rapid burial of their the amino acid sequence
remains, usually in waterborne reflects changes in the DNA
sediment. composition of an organism
- Fossil evidences show the
chronological emergence of 3. Comparative Embryology
vertebrates as being sequential
to fishes, followed by
amphibians, reptiles, birds and
mammals.
- Radiometric dating is a type of
fossil dating which uses the
radioactive material in
sediment
to determine the fossil’s age.
The technique assumes that in
undisturbed layers of rock, the
deepest rock layers contain the
oldest fossils.
4. Comparative Anatomy
- The evolutionary relationships
among groups of organisms
can be determined through
structural resemblances called
homologous structures

5. Biogeographical Evidences
- Biogeography is the study of
the geographical distribution of
species at present and in the
past.It stresses the role of
species dispersal from a point of
origin across pre-existing barriers
that separate them from their
population.