Most recent common ancestor Essays

  • Multimedia Memoir: Textual Analysis

    596 Words  | 2 Pages

    In assignment five, the multimedia memoir, I tell a story spanning the course of approximately 2 years, taking my audience (everyone from picky eaters to thrill seeking “cuisinests”) on a journey through how I became a “foodie”. This voyage is presented through a website format (http://afoodiesodyssey.weebly.com/) with various multimedia elements, allowing me to use different rhetorical strategies for different scenarios. Through social media, animations, video, pictures, and text I am able to convey

  • Early Odontocetic Environmental Analysis

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    time of their first noted observation in the wild. They are proven to have oceanic ancestors which invaded the riverine systems on at least three independent events and hence develop ecological extreme specialization to adapt to the freshwater environment. Although this hypothesis has been challenged, invasion of the freshwater systems might have insured their survival against either competitive exclusion by more recent and better adapted smaller cetaceans or changing physical parameters of the oceanic

  • Cheetah Research Paper

    1519 Words  | 4 Pages

    comparison to other cats, like lions, leopards, and servals that inhabit the african continent. Each of the cats in Africa adapted to their own particular niches as environmental factors pushed them to different ecological climates than where their ancestors lived. This is part of the reason as to why the cheetah is remarkably different than other cats that live in Africa. Additionally, the cheetah is the only extant species in their genus, Acinonyx. It is hypothesized that there are at least 10 other

  • Evolution Vs Creationism Essay

    1121 Words  | 3 Pages

    specific theory states that modern humans came from different ancestors that were descendants of a more common ancestor, Homo erectus. According to this theory, Neanderthals are only an ancestor of some Homo sapiens today, around the Europe area, and not the ancestors of Homo sapiens from other parts of the globe. The evidence for this, explained by American Institute of Biological Science, are facts such as that after each region 's common ancestor, there was a lot of interbreeding that caused the one Homo

  • Essay On Fear Of Darkness

    592 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fear of darkness is not irrational A recent UK survey by Go Glow involving 2,000 adults concluded that four out of ten of us are frightened to walk around the house in pitch black. In this research, people said that the biggest causes of this irrational fear of the dark was watching a scary movie, being home alone, and hearing sudden noises in the middle of the night. 10% said the dark frightens the dark so much that they wouldn't even go to the toilet in the dark. Although many adults are embarrassed

  • Summary Of Steven Pinker's Revenge Of The Nerds

    1210 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Revenge of the Nerds” Analysis In “Revenge of the Nerds,” Steven Pinker investigates on how our mind has evolved throughout the history of natural selection. Pinker claims that the standardized evolutionary timeline for human is in fact flawed and unreliable due to its limited scope and consistencies vary based on different perspective. He suggests that the evolutionary timeline actually started much earlier and end later than what has already been established in the standardized timeline.

  • Richard Dawkins River Out Of Eden Analysis

    898 Words  | 2 Pages

    that Dawkins is referring to in his title is a metaphor for a river of DNA with approximately thirty million branches for every organism on Earth. When it comes to evolution and species divergences Dawkins believes in gradualism stating, “When the ancestors of all modern mammals broke away from those that are not mammals the event was no more momentous than any other speciation. It would have gone unremarked by any naturalist who happened to be around at the time” (Dawkins

  • The Development Of Whales: The Evolution Of Whales

    2293 Words  | 5 Pages

    of a common ancestor of the whale known as Pakicetus. Many scientists believe that Pakicetus resembled the seal in its appearance. Pakicetus could not be considered a whale, since its backbone and limbs do not have similar features to those of a whale. Therefore, it is considered an ancestor of the whale, since it has some features of the whale and some unique features (or features of other mammals). Today’s whales have mammalian characteristics, which prove that they have evolved from a common ancestor

  • Evolution of the Loxodonta africana and Elephas maximus and how they could lose their tusks

    1187 Words  | 3 Pages

    species, however, has dwindled significantly in the past years due to the high number of deaths of elephants due to poaching. The continuation of poaching has a possibility of a new evolutionary event within the elephants, elephants without tusks. Ancestors of the extant Loxodonta africana and Elephas maximus The family of Elephantidae shows a high rate of evolution, early stages of which were confined to Africa, while later stages occurred in Eurasia (Kalmykov & Mashchenko, 2006). Numerous studies

  • Adaptations and Life of Tree-Dwelling Sloths

    1212 Words  | 3 Pages

    their time in the trees. They hang from the branches, gripping with their long claws. Most sloths sleep some 15-20 hours a day. When they are awake, the barely move so the appear to still be asleep.(6) Their forearms are longer than their thighs so when on land, the crawl with their elbows and their claws. They also have thighs that are spaced so widely that they cannot

  • The Importance Of Ancestor Veneration In Ancient Norse Literature

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    ---------------------- ANCESTORS --------------------------- Ancestor veneration is a practice that nearly all animistic peoples, past and present, have shared, and the pre-Christian Norse and other Germanic peoples are certainly no exception. The dead remained in their community’s collective memory long after their passing, and were perceived to confer blessings upon the land and the people they left behind. This may have been especially so if they were properly reverenced by their descendents

  • Out Of Africa Hypothesis

    1193 Words  | 3 Pages

    evolution and migration. Mitochondrial DNA plays an instrumental role in pinpointing how and when modern humans evolved from other hominid species as well as how and when large-scale human migrations likely occurred. What is Mitochondrial DNA? Although most of a person’s DNA is contained with the nuclei of their cells,

  • Dinosaurs And Birds

    723 Words  | 2 Pages

    really dinosaurs or are they simply related? That is a question that has gained new life in recent years due to the overwhelming facts the are pouring in from newly found fossils and studies from fossils that have been found in the past. Two groups have formed in the study of this question: those who believe birds are a direct result of dinosaurs and those who feel dinosaurs and birds must have had a common ancestor. Determining which view is correct is a matter of opinion based on fact. The main problem

  • Ancient Burial Grounds of Hawaii

    832 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ancient Burial Grounds of Hawaii In recent years, ancient burial grounds have been frequently disturbed due to increasing surveillance by anthropologists and constructed on by state-of-the-art technology and are more critically protected than ever before. Understanding the importance of burial grounds gives an insight on the rich history of ancient Hawaii. They have influenced the burials performed, ancestors and their modern inhabitants, and how they have impacted modern Hawaii. Burial methods will

  • Out Of Africa Theory And The Out Of Africa Origin Theory

    638 Words  | 2 Pages

    The origin of modern humans is one of the most widely debated concerns in the area of paleoanthropology. Ever since the discovery of the Neanderthal in the mid 1800’s, scientists such as Charles Darwin and many others have been overly curious about the similarity of man to certain great apes and how over long periods of time have evolved from different archaic forms of humans up to today’s homo sapiens. There are two major theories that encompass how modern humans may have evolved from the various

  • Phylogenetic And Phylogenetic Tree

    910 Words  | 2 Pages

    came up with this binomial nomenclature where every single species has its own scientific name. Phylogeny is an estimated representation of an organism’s or group of organisms’ evolutionary history. Scientist use a phylogenetic tree to visualize ancestor descent relationship through time. The closer together different taxa are represented in a phylogenetic tree the more closely related the species are to each other. Phylogenetic tree is consists of different types of characteristics which makes it

  • Shinto And Christianity: The Impact Of Progressive Ideas

    1420 Words  | 3 Pages

    respectively—until recent years. Christianity is essentially the religion by which the Western calendar was dated, with dates divided between AD (anno domini—Latin for “year of Our Lord) and BC (before Christ)—the birth of Christ serving as the year 1 mark. With the West’s move away from Christianity towards secularism and progressive ideals, AD and BC have been replaced by CE and BCE—common era and before the common era, respectively. In Japan, Shinto has also been marginalized in recent years as a result

  • Intelligent Design Vs Evolution

    1791 Words  | 4 Pages

    The first signs of life date back to 2.9 billion years ago but before the 19th century, most people had believed in God, creation, or Intelligent Design. This all changed when The Origin of Species was Published in 1859 by Charles Darwin; he believed in the concept of species changing over time, evolution. The most controversial topic the world has ever known. From ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science. Beginning with modern biological taxonomy when

  • Primates And Synthesis Essay

    577 Words  | 2 Pages

    A hominin is part of the family Hominini and is classified to be the most similar to a human. There are 8 traits that were discussed in class that give primates their features to be called primates. They are opposable big toes and prehensile thumbs, flat nails and fingernails, locomotion in hind-limb dominated, olfactory apparatus, vision is highly developed, small litters, brain is large, and molars are unspecialized. These traits define primates, but are not limited to humans alone. The book says

  • Evolutionary Trees

    1280 Words  | 3 Pages

    of life as people know it. All these Trees of Life provide the basic information such as historical patterns of ancestry, divergence, and descent, utilizing series of branches that merge at points representing common ancestors, which themselves are connected through more distant ancestors (Gregory, 2008). There are two classic types of data for phylogenetic analysis that are taken into consideration: the morphological and molecular data, each having distinct advantages and potential pitfalls. In