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92 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Anthropology
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THE MOST HUMANISTIC OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND THE MOST SCIENTIFIC OF THE HUMANITIES
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Franz Boas
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Distinguished between biological and cultural heredity, and to focus on the cultural processes that he believed had the greatest influence over social life
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Baffin Island
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Inspired Franz Boas, one of the greatest anthropologists in history. He wrote his thesis on the natives.
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Historical particularism
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Showed that societies could reach the same level of cultural development through different paths
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Cultural relativism
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while the anthropologist is in the field, he or she temporarily suspends ("brackets") their own esthetic and moral judgements
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Orthogenesis
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Process of evolution in which change occurs progressively regardless of natural selection.
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Ethnography
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process of evolution in which change occurs progressively regardless of natural selection.
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Evolution
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Is the interdisciplinary study of the evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and the relation between hominids and non-hominid primates
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Evolution by natural selection
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Natural selection is the gradual natural process by which biological traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of the effect of inherited traits on the differential reproductive success of organisms interacting with their environment.
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Thomas Malthus
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The population will outstrip the food supply, eventually
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Fitness
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it describes the ability to both survive and reproduce, and is equal to the average contribution to the gene pool of the next generation that is made by an average individual
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Sexual selection
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Sexual selection is a mode of natural selection in which some individuals out-reproduce others of a population because they are better at securing mates.
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Scientific method
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A method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
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Extinction
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the state or process of a species, family, or larger group being or becoming extinct.
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Primary scientific literature
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Primary sources are original materials. Information for which the writer has no personal knowledge is not primary, although it may be used by historians in the absence of a primary source.
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Speciation
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The formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution.
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Species/Biological species concept
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The biological species concept gives an explanation of how species form (speciation). A biological species is a group of individuals which can breed together (panmixia). However, they cannot breed with other groups. In other words, the group is reproductively isolated from other groups.
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Hybridization
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The process by which cultures around the world adopt a certain degree of homogenized global culture while clinging to aspects of their own traditional culture
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Eukaryote
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an organism consisting of a cell or cells in which the genetic material is DNA in the form of chromosomes contained within a distinct nucleus. Eukaryotes include all living organisms other than the eubacteria and archaebacteria.
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Macroevolutionary processes
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Macroevolution generally refers to evolution above the species level. So instead of focusing on an individual beetle species, a macroevolutionary lens might require that we zoom out on the tree of life, to assess the diversity of the entire beetle clade and its position on the tree.
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Anagenesis
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A key point is that the entire population is different from the ancestral population such that the ancestral population can be considered extinct
The evolution of species involving an entire population rather than a branching event |
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Cladogenesis
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Cladogenesis is an evolutionary splitting event in a species in which each branch and its smaller branches forms a "clade", an evolutionary mechanism and a process of adaptive evolution that leads to the development of a greater variety of sister species.
Ex: Darwin's Birds |
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Pseudoextinction
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All members of the species are extinct, but members of a daughter species remain alive. As all species must have an ancestor of a previous species, much of evolution is believed to occur through pseudoextinction.
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Tempo and mode of evolution
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Tempo is the speed of extinction and mode is by what means extinction is occurring
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Unit of selection
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A unit of selection is a biological entity within the hierarchy of biological organisation (e.g. self-reproducing molecules, genes, cells, individuals, groups, species) that is subject to natural selection.
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Adaptive radiation
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the diversification of a group of organisms into forms filling different ecological niches.
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Unit of extinction
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The “unit of extinction” is the species going extinct
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What is life?
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The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.
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Primordial soup
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"Primordial soup" is a term introduced by the Soviet biologist Alexander Oparin. In 1924, he proposed the theory of the origin of life on Earth through the transformation, during the gradual chemical evolution of molecules that contain carbon in the primordial soup.
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Replicators
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The process of duplicating or producing an exact copy of a polynucleotide strand such as DNA.
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DNA
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deoxyribonucleic acid, a self-replicating material present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. It is the carrier of genetic information.
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RNA
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RNA is a crucial process in DNA replication
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Ribozyme
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Ribozymes are important for life because they can cut off RNA
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Montmorillonite clay
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Montmorillonite is the main constituent of the volcanic ash weathering product, bentonite.
It can also help nucleotides to assemble into RNA which will end up inside the vesicles. It has been demonstrated that this could have generated highly complex RNA polymers that could reproduce the RNA trapped within the vesicles. This process may have led to the origin of life on Earth. |
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Replicase
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an enzyme that catalyzes the synthesis of a complementary RNA molecule using an RNA template.
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LUCA
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The last universal ancestor (LUA), also called the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), or the cenancestor, is the most recent organism from which all organisms now living on Earth descend.[1] Thus it is the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all current life on Earth. The LUA is estimated to have lived some 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago
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Domains of Life
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The three-domain system is a biological classification introduced by Carl Woese in 1977[1][2] that divides cellular life forms into archaea, bacteria, and eukaryote domains
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Major transitions
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1) Smaller entities have often come about together to form larger entities. e.g. Chromosomes, eukaryotes, sex multicellular colonies.
2) Smaller entities often become differentiated as part of a larger entity. e.g. DNA & protein, organelles, anisogamy, tissues, castes 3) The smaller entities are often unable to replicate in the absence of the larger entity. e.g. Organelles, tissues, castes 4) The smaller entities can sometimes disrupt the development of the larger entity, e.g. Meiotic drive (selfish non-Mendelian genes), parthenogenesis, cancers, coup d’état 5) New ways of transmitting information have arisen.e.g. DNA-protein, cell heredity, epigenesis, universal grammar. |
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Origin of Earth
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Earth formed around 4.54 billion (4.54×109) years ago by accretion from the solar nebula. Volcanic outgassing probably created the primordial atmosphere, but it contained almost no oxygen and would have been toxic to humans and most modern life.
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Geologic Time Scale
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The history of the Earth is organized chronologically in a table known as the geologic time scale
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Big Bang
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The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that describes the early development of the Universe. According to the theory, the Big Bang occurred approximately 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago, which is thus considered the age of the universe
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Formation of the solar system
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Solar system formed from a large, rotating cloud of interstellar dust and gas called the solar nebula. It was composed of hydrogen and helium created shortly after the Big Bang
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Formation of the moon
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The giant impact hypothesis proposes that the Moon originated after a body the size of Mars struck the proto-Earth a glancing blow.
The ejecta in orbit around the Earth could have condensed into a single body within a couple of weeks. Under the influence of its own gravity, the ejected material became a more spherical body: the Moon |
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Late Heavy Bombardment
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a hypothetical event that is thought to have occurred approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago. During this interval, a disproportionately large number of asteroids apparently collided with the celestial bodies in our inner solar system, including Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
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Oldest dateable rocks on Earth
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The oldest dated rocks on Earth, as an aggregate of minerals that have not been subsequently melted or disaggregated by erosion, are from the Hadean Eon. Such rocks are exposed on the surface in very few places
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Oldest geologic evidence of life
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The earliest identified organisms were minute and relatively featureless, and their fossils look like small rods, which are very difficult to tell apart from structures that arise through abiotic physical processes. The oldest undisputed evidence of life on Earth, interpreted as fossilized bacteria, dates to 3 Ga
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Stromatolites
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Layered accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding and cementation of sedimentary grains by biofilms of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria. Stromatolites provide the most ancient records of life on Earth by fossil remains which date from more than 3.5 billion years ago.
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Metazoan
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any multicellular animal of the group Metazoa: includes all animals except sponges
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Vendian/Ediacaran Explosion
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The Ediacaran biota include the oldest definite multicellular organisms with tissues, and the most common types resemble segmented worms, fronds, disks, or immobile bags.
The Cambrian explosion, or Cambrian radiation, was the relatively rapid appearance, around 542 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record. |
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First fish
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Pikaia, along with Myllokunmingia and Haikouichthys ercaicunensis, are all candidates in the fossil record for the titles of "first vertebrate" and "first fish"
Pikaia is a genus that appeared about 530 Ma during the Cambrian explosion of multicellular life. |
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Land Plants
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exclude the green algae
The Embryophyta are informally called land plants because they live primarily in terrestrial habitats, while the related green algae are primarily aquatic. All are complex multicellular eukaryotes with specialized reproductive organs. |
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Flowering Plants
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The flowering plants (angiosperms), also known as Angiospermae Lindl. or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies (derived characteristics). These characteristics include flowers, endosperm within the seeds, and the production of fruits that contain the seeds
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FOXP2
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FOXP2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the FOXP2 gene, located on human chromosome 7. FOXP2 orthologs have also been identified in all mammals for which complete genome data are available
In humans, mutations of FOXP2 cause a severe speech and language disorder |
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Upper Paleolithic Explosion
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These new stone-tool types have been described as being distinctly differentiated from each other, as if each tool had a specific purpose. Three thousand to 4,000 years later, this tool technology spread with people migrating to Europe. The new technology generated a population explosion of modern humans which is believed to have led to the extinction of the Neanderthals.
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Background extinction
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The ongoing extinction of individual species due to environmental or ecological factors such as climate change, disease, loss of habitat, or competitive disadvantage in relation to other species. Background extinction occurs at a fairly steady rate over geological time and is the result of normal evolutionary processes, with only a limited number of species in an ecosystem being affected at any one time.
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Five major mass extinctions(1)
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Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction
The third largest extinction in Earth's history, the Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction had two peak dying times separated by hundreds of thousands of years. During the Ordovician, most life was in the sea, so it was sea creatures such as trilobites, brachiopods and graptolites that were drastically reduced in number. |
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Five major mass extinctions (2)
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Late Devonian mass extinction
Three quarters of all species on Earth died out in the Late Devonian mass extinction, though it may have been a series of extinctions over several million years, rather than a single event. Life in the shallow seas were the worst affected, and reefs took a hammering, not returning to their former glory until new types of coral evolved over 100 million years later. |
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Five major mass extinctions (3)
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Permian Mass Extinction
The Permian mass extinction has been nicknamed The Great Dying, since a staggering 96% of species died out. All life on Earth today is descended from the 4% of species that survived. |
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Five major mass extinctions (4)
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Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction
During the final 18 million years of the Triassic period, there were two or three phases of extinction whose combined effects created the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction event. Climate change, flood basalt eruptions and an asteroid impact have all been blamed for this loss of life. |
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Five major mass extinctions (5)
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Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction
The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction - also known as the K/T extinction - is famed for the death of the dinosaurs. However, many other organisms perished at the end of the Cretaceous including the ammonites, many flowering plants and the last of the pterosaurs. |
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Brachiopods
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Brachiopods, phylum Brachiopoda, are marine animals that have hard "valves" (shells) on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs.
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Bryozoans
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The Bryozoa, also known as Polyzoa, Ectoprocta or commonly as moss animals,[5] are a phylum of aquatic invertebrate animals. Typically about 0.5 millimetres (0.020 in) long, they are filter feeders that sieve food particles out of the water using a retractable lophophore, a "crown" of tentacles lined with cilia.
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Dunkleosteus
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is a genus of prehistoric fish, one of the largest arthrodire placoderms ever to have lived, existing during the Late Devonian period, about 380–360 million years ago.
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Ammonites
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The earliest ammonites appear during the Devonian, and the last species died out during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
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Trilobites
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are a well-known fossil group of extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the Atdabanian stage of the Early Cambrian period (521 million years ago), and they flourished throughout the lower Paleozoic era before beginning a drawn-out decline to extinction when, during the Devonian, all trilobite orders except Proetida died out. Trilobites finally disappeared in the mass extinction at the end of the Permian about 250 million years ago.
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End Permian
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Carbon went into the Oceans, took away the oxygen, and without oxygen the marine life died the original carbon source was actually in the oceans already in the form of frozen methane gas hydrates, They melted, causing a rise in carbon in the atmosphere, Carbon in the atmosphere causes climate change, killing a lot of animal life
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Ratio of C12 to C13
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The ratio between the heavy, stable isotope of carbon and the normal isotope in a sample of interest. Since organisms take up C12 in preference to C13, the ratio is used to determine whether or not the carbon in the specimen is of biological origin.
C12 makes up 98.89% of all carbon C13 makes up ~1.1% |
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Siberian Traps
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form a large region of volcanic rock, known as a large igneous province, in Siberia, Russia. The massive eruptive event which formed the traps, one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history, continued for a million years and spanned the Permian–Triassic boundary, about 251 to 250 million years ago.
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Basalts
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Common extrusive igneous (volcanic) rock formed from the rapid cooling of basaltic lava exposed at or very near the surface of a planet or moon.
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CAMP
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is the breakup of Pangea where you can see the separation of the near end Triassic and the beginning of Jurassic. Specifically, it stands for Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. It's where Africa and the Americas split, forming the Atlantic Ocean at the end of the Triassic.
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Chicxulub Crater
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The age of Chicxulub asteroid impact and the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary) coincide precisely, leading to the conclusion that the cause of the crater was the same cause resulting in the demise of non-avian dinosaurs on Earth
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Gambler’s Ruin
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Eventually, we will lose our luck and get hit by a massive asteroid or celestial body
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Periodicity
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the quality or character of being periodic; the tendency to recur at intervals
~26million years per extinction |
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Goodness of fit
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The goodness of fit of a statistical model describes how well it fits a set of observations. Measures of goodness of fit typically summarize the discrepancy between observed values and the values expected under the model in question
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Press extinction
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Extinction happens gradually
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Pulse Extinction
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Extinction happens suddenly
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Lazarus taxa
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A Lazarus taxon (plural taxa) is a taxon that disappears for one or more periods from the fossil record, only to appear again later.
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Coelacanth
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First known example of 'Lazarus Taxa'
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Cosmopolitan vs. endemic taxa
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An endemic taxon is one native to and restricted to a particular area
vs Cosmopolitan taxon is very widespread, typically on all continents and often on many islands as well. |
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Specialist vs. generalist (stenotopic vs. euryotopic)
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A generalist species is able to thrive in a wide variety of environmental conditions and can make use of a variety of different resources
A specialist species can only thrive in a narrow range of environmental conditions or has a limited diet. Most organisms do not all fit neatly into either group, however. |
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Hominin
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Hominini is the tribe of Homininae that comprises Homo, and other members of the human clade after the split from the tribe Panini (chimpanzees)
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Common ancestry
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A group of organisms share common descent if they have a common ancestor. There is strong evidence that all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor, called the last universal ancestor or LUA (or last universal common ancestor, LUCA)
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Key events in human evolution
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· Possible fusion of bacteria and archaea leading to eukaryotes
· The advent of bipedalism (an adaptation) · The human-chimp-gorilla split (cladogenesis) · Shifting dietary strategies (adaptation) · Rampant splitting (cladogenesis) · Tool use (adaptation) · Globe spanning migration (consequence of adaptation?) · Dramatic brain expansion (adaptation) · Language (a major transition) · The great winnowing (I think were alone now) |
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Teleology
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A teleology is any philosophical account that holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that, analogous to purposes found in human actions, nature inherently tends toward definite ends.
Ex: |
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Niche
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a position or role taken by a kind of organism within its community. Such a position may be occupied by different organisms in different localities, e.g., antelopes in Africa and kangaroos in Australia.
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Turnover-Pulse Model
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1. Periodic disturbance - Climate
2. Extinction (possibly specialists) - Some species survive 3. Speciation (possibly new specialists) - New species adapt |
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Milankovitch cycles
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Milankovitch theory describes the collective effects of changes in the Earth's movements upon its climate
The Earth's axis completes one full cycle of precession approximately every 26,000 years |
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Multiregional Evolution
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The multiregional hypothesis is an alternative scientific model that provides an explanation for the pattern of human evolution. The hypothesis holds that humans first arose near the beginning of the Pleistocene two million years ago and subsequent human evolution has been within a single, continuous human species.
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Neandertals
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extinct species of the genus Homo, possibly a subspecies of Homo sapiens. They are closely related to modern humans, differing in DNA by only 0.3%, just twice the variability across contemporary humans
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Neandertal morphology
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differed from modern humans in that they had a more robust build and distinctive morphological features, especially on the cranium,
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Neandertal FOXP2
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Had the same version as Humans
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Unique features of the pygmy tarsier
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he most noticeable feature of the pygmy tarsier are its large eyes, about 16 mm in diameter. The pygmy tarsier also has nails on all five digits of each hand and on two digits of each foot. The claw-like nails aid in its grasping strength and are also used as an aid in its need for vertical support for feeding and movement.
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