Analogy & Homology Blog Post

1------Homology------

1.      Two different species that I chose to describe homology were dragonfly and butterfly. Dragonflies have four long wings two on each side and butterflies have wide four wings two on each side. Dragonflies have long body shape like butterflies. It is easy to come up with an answer that dragonflies and butterflies share same trait of wings even though their wings look different.
2.     Dragonflies and butterflies share similar body shape but different shape of wings. Even though their wings seem different, they have common function, flying.
3.      Dragonflies and butterflies share same ancestors from way back in centuries even when dinosaurs were existed and they also had wings to fly around to find food or run away from predators. In other words, the ancestors of these species share same trait and considered homologous.

2------Analogy-------

1.       Two different species that I chose to describe analogy were sharks and dolphins. They both live underwater, and also have fins that look alike. The sharks’ and dolphins’ appearances are very similar but inside of the body structure is very different. While shark use gills to collect oxygen underwater, dolphins go up to the surface to breath air. Their trait of fins seemed to be passed on from same ancestors but they are not.
2.       Dolphins and sharks have very similar body structure having streamed body shape and triangular fin on their back. The function of theses traits is to live underwater. But even though they have same function, since shark uses gills to collect oxygen, shark is considered as fish but dolphins are considered as mammals since they breathe atmospheric air.
3.       Dolphins evolved from a land mammal with closest relative of hippo. Hippos don’t have any fins just like any mammals. That means whales and dolphins evolved their fins independently of sharks in different lineages. For the sharks, sharks are from fish ancestors, which lived underwater for centuries. However, the pectoral fins of sharks and dolphins are homologous. The dolphin’s pectoral fins evolved from the tetrapod hand, and tetrapod hand was evolved from pectoral fin of lobe-finned fish. Recent studies showed that lobe-finned fishes have the same number of bones as the pectoral fins of sharks which means that the front limbs of tetrapods evolved from the pectoral fins of the common ancestor of sharks, ray-finned and lobe-finned fishes.

Protein Synthesis

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Darwin's Theory

Eui Yun

Professor Laurie

Anthropology 101

15 April 2011

Charles Lyell

Charles Lyell was a geologist who believed in uniformitarianism which deals with geological and biological forces were acted same over and over again with same force throughout the Earth’s past and present that caused to have the landscape we have today on Earth. According to Allaboutscience Organization, Lyell's work formed the foundation of belief in a universe billions of years old. Lyell was a geologist that enabled him to see how old the rocks were and came with a conclusion of Earth is old. Charles Lyell’s concept “deep time” was one of the most significant contributions to the discovery of evolutionary principles.

Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin were good friends who believed their theories together. Charles Darwin, who thought of evolutionary theory, did not have any proof until Charles Lyell came up with “deep time” concept which made Darwin’s theory logical. Charles Lyell, knowing, the Earth was very old, demonstrated that forces of natural disasters and weathers that have changed the geological landscape until now, but is till consistently changing now. In other words, lots of species and living organisms were changing throughout the time.

I believe if it wasn’t for Charles Lyell supporting Darwin’s theory, the evolutionary theory could have been another imagination to many people. Because Charles Lyell had a proof of changing of landscape of Earth, it made it possible of living organisms changing through over time to adapt to their environment. This supported Darwin’s theory a lot.

The church’s attitude toward Darwin’s theory was negative due to the fact that his theory was going opposite direction from bibles. Church’s idea was humans were fixed body from before and Darwin’s idea was that humans were evolved from other species. After Darwin completed his work and published “On the Origin of Species”, public opinion was negative but the book was scholarly praised and the support of Darwin’s theory gradually increased.