Great Transformations
From the development of the four-limbed body plan, the journey of animal life from water to land and the emergence of humans, Great Transformations focuses on the evolutionary changes that triggered the earth’s incredible diversity. Great Transformations is the second segment of the 2001 PBS special called Evolution.
Please answer the following as succinctly as possible:
1. What is meant by “Great Transformations”? Why are they so important?
- In 1978, Paleontologist Gingerich found a fossil in Pakistan that looked like a whale ear on a wolf skull. What is significant about this fossil?
- Gingrich found exciting fossils in the “Valley of the Whales” in the Sahara Desert. What were they, and what do they signify?
- How do whales swim, and what does this tell us about whale evolution?
- In 1995, Deshler found an important fossil from 370 mya in a Central Pennsylvania site. What was the fossil, and why is it important?
- Jenny Clack of the University of Cambridge reconstructed a tetrapod that she referred to as a “fish with fingers.” Why was this a scientific breakthrough?
- What is the Cambrian Explosion?
- What is the Burgess Shale? What is important about the creatures found there?
- What is evolution tinkering with?
- What did Levine’s and McGinness’ successful isolation of the antennapedia gene suggest?
- What happened when Walter Gehring replaced a fly’s gene for eyes (eyeless gene) with a mouse gene for eyes? What does this suggest?
- Why do we look at lemurs to understand human transitions such as bipedality?
14. What is our relationship to modern chimpanzees?