BIOL1112- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History assignment

Visit the Human Origin Hall of the Natural History Museum and the Q?rius room to learn about the human origin and determine the following: Where in the globe the oldest lineages of hominids were found? How recent findings of fossil hominids changed the idea of origin of human lineages? What characters scientists used to find out whether a giving fossil hominid represents an older or more recent lineage? Provide two hypotheses of selection pressures that could drive shape changes in those characters? How changes in the environment that happen thousands of years ago could have affected human evolution? What are your thoughts about what hominid species is sister to the unknown? Visit the Bones and Mummies hall and look for the exhibition on skull evolution. What are your hypotheses about pressures driving loss and fusion of bones observed across vertebrates? Ocean Hall- Evolution of Whales What fish species would you think is sister to or consider and earlier tetrapod? What evidences from the fossil record would support the idea that the common ancestor of whales may have lived on land? What conclusions can you make after comparing the anklebone of a what and a deer? What main modifications you can identify from fossil whales compared to the extant/living ones? Explore the coevolution of butterflies and plants using the natural history collection. Describe your experience. Provide examples of how butterflies may use plants and how plants my use butterflies to survive. BONUS: The origin of life might have happened through a DNA or RNA molecule.What arguments would use to justify one or another hypothesis?