A Repository of Useful Links/URLs Under the Subject of Evolution

[observer]

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Great links you got there, orcgod!

I'd like to share some which I've watched some years ago. It's a very illuminating lecture by Charles R. Marshall, Professor of Geology and Biology at Harvard University.

Evolution: From the Fossil Record to Genomic Revolution 1 of 2

Evolution: From the Fossil Record to Genomic Revolution 2 of 3

Evolution: From the Fossil Record to Genomic Revolution 3 of 3

[orcgod]

Great Videos observer, thanks for sharing. Here are more Evolution Videos.

Evolution Of The Gut

Evolution Of The Gut 1of5 - YouTube
Evolution Of The Gut 2of5 - YouTube
Evolution Of The Gut 3of5 - YouTube
Evolution Of The Gut 4of5 - YouTube
Evolution Of The Gut 5of5 - YouTube


Evolution Of Jaws

Evolution Of Jaws 1of5 - YouTube
Evolution Of Jaws 2of5 - YouTube
Evolution Of Jaws 3of5 - YouTube
Evolution Of Jaws 4of5 - YouTube
Evolution Of Jaws 5of5 - YouTube


Venom Evolution

Venom Evolution 1of5 - YouTube
Venom Evolution 2of5 - YouTube
Venom Evolution 3of5 - YouTube
Venom Evolution 4of5 - YouTube
Venom Evolution 5of5 - YouTube


Life before the Dinosaurs

Life before the Dinosaurs 1 - YouTube
Life before the Dinosaurs 2 - YouTube
Life before the Dinosaurs 3 - YouTube
Life before the Dinosaurs 4 - YouTube
Life before the Dinosaurs 5 - YouTube
Life before the Dinosaurs 6 - YouTube
Life before the Dinosaurs 7 - YouTube
Life before the Dinosaurs 8 - YouTube

[kenites]

Nice thread orcgod...I will find time to check and read all of your links..thanks for sharing

[observer]

Lest we forget, aside from nature acting as selecting agent, humans too have been playing that role for centuries. In fact, that's what chapter 1 of Darwin's On the Origin of Species talks about: animal husbandry and plant breeding from the time of ancient Egypt. He used pigeon breeding as his famous example (see picture below of the sample shapes and sizes of pigeon skulls). In my opinion, that was a stroke of genius for Darwin, to prepare the minds of readers about what's possible in nature. It's like saying, if we could produce these varieties under artificial selection in just a few hundreds or a few thousands of years, imagine what nature could accomplish in billions of years.



In describing this fancy pigeon breeding, Darwin wrote: "The diversity of the breeds is something astonishing, yet all were descended from one species of rock pigeon."

Another example of animal domestication is dog breeding. Here's an article from the BBC about the origin of dogs: Origin of dogs traced.

Dogs today come in all shapes and sizes, but scientists believe they evolved from just a handful of wolves tamed by humans living in or near China less than 15,000 years ago.

Here's a very short clip, from National Geographic, of how wolves started to become human companions: The Start of the Domestic Dog.

Here's a very simplified ancestral tree of modern dogs:
[IMG]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L94dBSfm7wc/Tdx3Ysfc0CI/AAAAAAAAD9A/NJYH0_GdWz0*******dog_history_tree.jpg[/IMG]

And here's a diagram showing a diversity of dog breeds emanating from their common wolf ancestors:


Lastly, if you want to take this picture of common ancestry further back, here's a phylogenetic tree of the Canid species:

[phyler]

nice posts!!

[orcgod]

@observer - like your post. im also waiting for NatGeo to make a docu about evolution of primitive or ancient wolves.

also i found this video about evolution of Lice. it was very interesting. It answers questions about when we start using clothes, and when our body hair starts to diminish.

NOVA | Lice and Human Evolution
Lice show humans first wore clothes 170,000 years ago - YouTube

[observer]

^^orcgod, very interesting. Makes me think...which came first: the shedding of body hair or the first use of clothes?

* the PBS NOVA link seems to be limited to the US region. This is the more interesting clip since it deals with clues held by lice about our own evolution.

Anyway, I thought of contributing more information on artificial selection, because that's almost like our own experiment on evolution. The star for today is: the banana.

If you've followed the so-called controversies of the Darwinian theory from the other side, you may have stumbled upon a character named Ray Comfort or "Mr. Banana Man" (you can look it up in Youtube by searching "Ray Comfort banana"). I'm not sure if he's still doing the rounds with his banana presentation.

A lot of people who never bothered to trace the history of stuffs they consume would be surprised to know that modern day bananas all descended from two wild species of bananas: Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. And they look something like this....



Doesn't look too appetizing now, is it?

It took hundreds of years of domestication till we got the table variety which we either consume directly or as centerpiece in a banana split or banana-cue.

Here's my favorite, the latundan:


...and the popular lacatan:


...the export variety called the cavendish:


...the red banana:


...the lady finger:


...Saba Banana (also known as Cardaba banana) or the banana we either cook or boil:


...and so forth.

Who would've thought that all these came from that "ugly" seeded, wild banana?

Our ready-to-eat bananas, as you know, are seedless. They are technically called parthenocarpic bananas. Parthenocarpy is the "natural or artificially induced production of fruit without fertilization of ovules" (definition taken from Wikipedia). In other words, this is the plant kingdom's version of "virgin birth" (no pun intended) and it occasionally happens as a mutation in nature. In some fruits, seedlessness is desirable for human consumption...fruits like: pineapples, oranges, grapes, watermelon and grapefruit. And, of course, we do not want our nut crops (like pistachios, peanuts, etc) to be seedless, because in this case the seeds are the edible part of the crop.

[orcgod]

@observer - yeah, ive seen that Mr. banana man. Unfortunately, he needs to research more on banana evolution. hehe. thanks for sharing this, its an added information for all of us.

[orcgod]

found this one in pbs.org. very nice.

NOVA | Becoming Human Part 1
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evoluti...an-part-2.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evoluti...an-part-3.html


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evoluti...-evolving.html

[orcgod]

Evolution in Action: Salamanders

NOVA | Evolution in Action: Salamanders

NOVA visits David Wake, a renowned evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, as he explains why members of the same species of California salamander look and behave so differently. It's a case study of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and an example, Wake says, that Darwin himself would have loved.