midterm 2 Flashcards
(121 cards)
monophyletic group
common ancestor and all descendant species
polyphyletic group
doesn’t include a common ancestor
paraphyletic group
doesn’t include all descendant species
how does continental shift impact flora/fauna? (ex. why are marsupials in australia and south america?)
plants and animals used to live on several continents when they were connected (pangea). When the continents shifted, the species stayed on those continents and evolved.
how do scientists determine the start/end of a time period
based on biological events (mass extinctions)
What do geologists use to figure out when something happened? How is this different from evolutionary biology?
geologists use dating with isotopes and their half-lives (ex. packrat waste; pre-contact dog bone; C3/C4 grasses and horse teeth). phylogeny uses molecular clock theory.
where does the energy for continental movement come from?
magma under the earth’s crust
what are the two pieces of evidence that prove there was a supercontinent and then the continents moved?
mid atlantic ridge; earthquakes, mountains, volcanoes
convergent plate movement
plates crash into each other
divergent plate movement
plates move away from each other
transformational plate movement
plates slide past each other
consequence of oceanic-oceanic convergence
one goes up, other goes down, creates mountains
consequence of continental-oceanic convergence
oceanic goes down, continental goes up, creates mountains
consequence of continental-continental convergence
one goes up, one goes down, creates mountains
How did scientists track the extinction of irish elks and mammoths? What pattern did they find?
used isotope dating to track their fossils. the large mammals went extinct as human moved across eurasia.
dispersal
movement of individuals across areas
vicariance
breakup of continents/areas
what is pleistocene overkill?
the idea that humans overhunted megafauna for food, severely decreasing their abundance and diversity
why is it hard to figure out what caused mass extinctions?
humans and asteroids only caused one mass extinction each. evidence about what caused the others gets lost through plate tectonics
what is thought to have caused the permian/triassic mass extinction?
The supercontinent, pangea, was very far north and heavily glaciated. this caused ocean levels to drop. plate tectonic activity under the ice carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the air (what is now known as the siberian trap).
How was the early atmosphere like?
no ozone layer, no oxygen
How have humans changed the environment leading to the anthropocene era?
platic/pollution/great pacific garbage patch, change in atmospheric C14, increased nitrogen and methane in atmosphere
what three processes changed the composition fo the early atmosphere?
photosynthesis - released O2 as waste. volcanic activity - released water vapor, CO2, and nitrogen. Other chemical reactions produced CO2 which turned into acid and dissolved rock into soil
consequences of oxygen in the environment/atmosphere
environment became aerobic; caused the oxygen catastrophe: first mass extinction (wiped out anaerobic life); ozone layer blocked UV rays and allowed for larger organisms with more complex genomes (lesser chance of mutations now)