Friday, January 25, 2008

Guest Lecturer: Louise Mead



On Thursday, Louise Mead of the National Center for Science Education came to our school and gave us a lecture. Although we could not move around the classrom as we always do when we have a lab, this lecture certainly gives us a lot of information about evolution. In her lecture, she mainly focused on the evidence for evolution. To explain, she provided many pictures and described them in details. Also, she talked about how different people look at evolution differently.

"What is evolution and do you accept it?" -- this was how she started her lecture. This is what I wrote: evolution is a change in species over time. I accept evolution because it is the way of life.

She related these questions to the day's lecture. The first thing she talked about was the evidence for evolution. They include biogeography, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, fossil record, and developmental biology.


Biogeography
It is the districution of plants and aminals over space and time.

Comparative anatomy
The bone structure for humans, bats, and birds are very similar, but they are not exactly identical. Why? Because of different environments and ways of living.

Comparative biochemistry and molecular biology
Humans have 2 chromosomes less than chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. The reason for this is that one of the 2 centromeres became inactivated during the formation of human chromosome 2.

Fossil record
By using fossils, scientists can find out more of the evolution of species. For example, scientists found out that fins could become limbs.

Developmental biology
It is possible: genes of humans and mice have something in common.


Besides the evidence for evolution, Louise Mead also talked about creation. A report showed that most people believed God created human beings while fewer people believed God had no part in the process. As for me, I think evolution exists because many evidence shows that evolution is occuring over generations. However, it is indeed hard for some religious people to accept evolution.

This lecture is very meaningful since it provides a lot of information and pictures where we cannot find in the book. The lecture makes me have a better concept of what evolution is and to understand how scientists discovered evolution.

To conclude, evolution is a really interesting topic since it makes people hard to believe and wonder how humans are actually evolved from earlier species.

1 comment:

KaYan said...

this is very interesting Shannen! (: