The homework from the night before brought up the evidence for evolution, and we spring into the second Paleontology unit.
Evolution is a theory, meaning it is not completely proven true, per say. However, due to the observable data, it is considered much more than a scientific "hunch." Charles Darwin interpreted the data around him to determine that all creatures originated from a common ancestor. The fossil record, all the fossils in age-related layers buried in the ground, and similarities in genes all support Darwin's inference, which is widely accepted to be "true" today. But it is not written in stone because of human inability to prove it to be correct.
Then there was a lab with small beads, which naturally got all over the classroom. The purpose was to prove some of Darwin's principles, including that humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas evolved from a common ancestor. To do so, we assigned bead colors to each of the amino acids in the DNA strand.
- Green for Guanine (appropriate)
- White for Thymine
- Red for Cytosine
- Black for Adenine
From there we lined up the beads to form a strand, then compared the two. We could see a few trends, a came up with a cladogram. (Since I don't have the original, here is a copy: )
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