MY RESEARCH PLAN By Yvette RomeroCompletedAssignmentDat.docx

MY RESEARCH PLAN
By Yvette Romero
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Research Proposal & Plan
9/25/18
Conference Day @ 9:30 A.M
DUE: 9/27/18
Annotated Bibliography (5)
Submit Annotated Bibliography
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10/17/18
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11/3/18
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2

Introduction
Evolution is the process that involves the change in organisms
over a period of time as a result of changes in hereditable,
physical or behavioral characters. The truth behind Evolution
emphasizes the solid pieces of evidence that verifies mostly
evolution natural selection to be a fact. Putting together and
explaining the latest ideas and discoveries from many disparate
areas of the modernized science Jerry A. Coyne leaves us with
an open mind in his book of why evolution is true in any doubt
about the truth and the beauty of evolution.
Chapter One: What is Evolution
Learning models in the evolution theories include various
theories that explain more about the evolution and existence of
many living things on the planet earth. These theories include
cell theories, relativity theory, evolution theory (Winther,
2015), the theory of plate tectonics and atomic theory.
Evolution shows us more about us in the whole extraordinary
and the great array of life. It brings us together with every
living thing in the earth today and with long-dead creatures and
myriads whereby it provides us with the true accounts of our
origins hence replacing thousands of year’s myths that existed
and satisfied us.
According to Darwin’s theory of Evolution, it states that the
whole of life was as a result of evolution (Winther, 2015). The
operation was then later driven by Natural selection which
happens to be the most valid theory supported by evidence from
a wide variety of scientific fields like geology, genetics,
paleontology, and developmental scientists and it’s sometimes
described as the survival of the fittest. However, it is equally
thought to erode morality.
Various shreds of evidence have been found that supports the
evolution theory, for instance, the study on human evolution
that involved a study on 1,900 students published online in the
month of October 2017 in the journal Personality and individual
differences found that many people may have a problem in
finding a mate because of the rapidly changing social

technological advances that are faster growing than human
whereby one or two individuals face considerable difficulties
when mating (Winther, 2015). Also, the story of the origin of
whales is one of Darwin’s most evolution that is fascinating and
the best examples scientists have in selection hence that’s a
conclusion as to why evolution is true.
Chapter Two: Written in the Rocks
Fossils are known to be the original unchanged remains of
plants and animals. Its formation begins when an organism falls
into soft sediments like mud. All living organisms are
considered to have an equal ratio of carbon 12 and carbon 14.
When one dies, it ceases decay to replenish carbon into its
tissues and the decay of carbon 14 to nitrogen 14 changes the
ratio of carbon 12 to carbon 14. The radioactive isotope half-
life describes the amount of time that takes half of the isotope
in a sample to decay. In radiocarbon dating, carbon 14 half-life
is 5,730 years. Hence when finding the age of an organic
organism, the half-life of carbon 14 as well as the rate of decay
which is -0.693 is considered.
Grand Canyon has an amazing variety of rock foundations with
lots of fossils concealed within. The sedimentary rocks exposed
on the canyon are rich with marine fossils such as brachiopods,
crinoids, and sponges with some layers containing terrestrial
fossils such as leaf and dragonfly wing impressions, footprints
of scorpions, centipedes, and reptiles (Zwinger, 2015). Due to
the lack of a complete record of fossil, telling the exact rate and
divergence is made difficult (Allmon & Yacobucci, 2016). Lack
of a clear link makes it hard to conclude a direct link between
the ancestors.
Tiktaalik roseae also referred to as fishapod is a fossil fish
dating 375 million years which was found in 2004 in the
Canadian Arctic (Gordon, 2015). Being a mixture of both fish
and having amphibian traits, it is considered to be interesting.
The fish resembles a cross between the primitive fish and the
initial four-legged animals.
Various hypotheses have been suggested for where birds, as

well as their feathers, originated. However, that remains largely
unknown due to incomplete fossil record the structures and lack
of connection to a historical event. Functional speculation
regarding the origin of feathers usually focuses on three
possible alternatives which are flight, thermal insulation or
display. According to Brusatte et al., (2015), recent fossil finds
of Late Cretaceous feathered dinosaurs in China have
demonstrated that feathers appear to have originated in taxa that
retained a significant number of primitive nonavian features.
Current evidence strongly suggests even if the most primitive
known feathers are found on non-flying animals, birds are
theropod dinosaurs. As the earliest function of feathers was
probably not for aerial locomotion, it may be speculated that the
transitional animals represented by the Chinese fossils
possessed skin with the tensile properties of reptiles and
combined it with the apomorphic characteristics of feathers.
Chapter Three: Remnants: Vestiges, Embryos and Bad Design
This chapter points out features in the anatomy of different
animals that heavily imply the occurrence of an evolutionary
change happening in the millions of years preceding its
existence and following the existence of the organism’s
ancestors.
To begin with, the chapter explores the structures and
reasons for the existence of vestigial structures in humans,
horses, and ostriches. Vestiges have been defined as “a feature
of a species that was an adaptation in its ancestors, but that has
lost its usefulness completely or, as in the ostrich, has been co-
opted for new uses” (Coyne, p. 61). The most known vestigial
structure in humans is the appendix and the vestigial tail called
the coccyx “that’s made of fused vertebrae hanging below our
pelvis” (Coyne, p. 65-66). The chapter also explores atavisms
which are feature developed as a result of remnants of evolution
i.e. vestiges, being sporadically expressed during development
i.e., when the coccyx develops into a tail in humans.
Embryonic development was also largely explored as a big
indicator of the existence of evolution. Take for instance the

embryo of a human which first begins with a fish-like structure,
then to that of an amphibian, to a reptile and finally to a
mammal. This matches the order of evolution of humans and the
same is the case for other organisms and their orders of
evolution. It has also been argued that the existence of the
imperfect design of the anatomy of animals provides a good
case for the existence of evolution. Designs such as the location
of the gap that the egg needs to jump across the fallopian tube
from the ovary to the uterus, and the recurrent laryngeal nerve
of mammals covering way more distance from the brain to the
larynx than it needs to and making more prone to injury. This is
because the imperfect design is precisely what we would expect
from evolution (Coyne, p.86).
Chapter Four: The Geography of Life
This chapter explores evolution using a different
perspective that involves biogeographical evidence, the theory
of convergent evolution, the dispersion of species i.e. the
marsupials, the biological composition of island-based animals
when compared to those based on land.
The biographic evidence in this chapter explores the
effects of dispersion, the evolution of organisms and the Earth
over time. The knowledge being used now can be attributed to
those developments of continental drift and molecular
taxonomy. Using the molecular clock, we can match the
evolutionary relationships between species with the known
movements of the continents (Coyne, p.97). The theory of
convergent evolution was also introduced. It explains why
“species living in similar habitats will experience similar
selection pressures from their environment, so they may evolve
similar adaptations or converge, coming to look and behave
very much alike even though they are unrelated” (Coyne,
p.101). Instances of this phenomenon can be seen in the white
coat of polar bears and snowy owls. This theory illustrates
“three parts of the evolutionary theory: common ancestry,
speciation, and natural selection” (Coyne, p.101).
The existence of marsupials in Australia illustrates a

different part of the evolutionary tale since we need to
understand that marsupials traveled to Australia through
Antarctica when South America, Antarctica, Africa, and
Australia were still joined together to form the supercontinent
Gondwana. Evidence of this movement was found in Seymour
Island off the Antarctica Peninsula, dated at precisely the right
period of time (Coyne, p.102). This tale, together with that of
the continental drift also explains the existence of Glossopteris
fossil trees and the direction of glacial striations on the
underlying rock on the South American, South African and
Australian coasts. Lastly, the chapter explores the difference in
bio-geographical compositions between oceanic and continental
islands which are a result of differences in their formation to
prove the solidity of the evolution theory (Coyne, p.108).
Chapter Five: The Engine of Evolution
This chapter focuses on the process of natural selection,
how it happens and exactly why it happens. Coyne states that
there are three things involved in making an adaptation by the
process of natural selection. The first step involves the starting
population is variable. He makes the example of mice who
exhibit some difference in their coat colors, for instance, there
are white-coated and dark coated mice. The second step
necessitates that a major proportion of any variation that would
occur to result from gene variation, that is, it needs to have a
genetic basis, otherwise, referred to as heritability so that the
variation can be transferred to the following generation and not
die out. This genetic variation may result in mutations that have
been defined as “accidental changes in the sequence of DNA
that usually occur as errors when the molecule is copied during
cell division and may occur regardless of whether they would be
useful to the individual” (Coyne p. 128). The third step requires
a genetic variation to improve an individual’s probability of
leaving offspring (Coyne, p. 129).
The chapter goes forward to explain selection as a
combination of randomness and lawfulness (Coyne, p. 129). The
process of selection consists of two processes. The first process

is that of ‘random’ occurrence of variations and mutations in
the genome leading to genetic variations, while the second
process is that of natural selection which orders a particular
variation and thus picks out the good and dispensing with the
bad. So, in a way, the evolutionary process is both random and
not random as a result of both of these processes.
There are conditions, however, that will require an
‘adaptive’ feature to evolve through the process of natural
selection. One of these conditions is that the feature must result
in raising fitness i.e. the average number of offspring, of its
possessor (Coyne, p.131).
Chapter Six: How Sex Drives Evolution
This chapter of the book focuses on the connection
between sex and evolution. By sex, we mean the attraction
between the male and female, a phenomenon that occurs in
almost all the species on earth. The author approaches this topic
by looking at the peacock, and to be particular, the male
species. According to a letter written by Charles Darwin, he laid
down his frustration with the idea of animals having features
that have proven to be detrimental to their existence. The
anatomy of the peacock was his major frustration. Take for
instance the peacock, “with his iridescent blue-green tail,
studded with eyespots, fanned out in full glory behind a shiny
blue body”, it has features that are maladaptive to his long-term
survival (Coyne, 2009). As a result of the long tail, it cannot
fly, the sparkling colors attract marauders and it spends lots of
energy by using its tail to strike. Animals like the renowned
Irish elk and the túngara frogs down in Central America also
possess such maladaptive features that inspired the research into
the theory of sexual selection.
The theory of sexual selection results from the existence of
sexual dimorphisms. Sexual dimorphism is a phenomenon where
there are traits that differ between males and females of a
species (Coyne, 2009). These differences may show in different
parts of the animal’s body such as vocal capabilities, tail design
and body-color (Coyne, 2009). These features are then used by

sexual selection to simply select individuals that have a greater
chance of getting a mate. This theory is based on the idea that
some animals prioritize the necessity of procreation. As a result
of the need to increase the chances of one’s own procreation,
which is also viewed as a means of survival, the males develop
features that would increase their levels of attraction in the eyes
of the female sex. This selection can occur in two forms. One is
through direct competition between males for access to females
and secondly, is through females’ choosiness among possible
mates (Coyne, 2009).
Chapter Seven: The Origin of Species
The chapter on the origin of species is introduced by
taking a look at the work of a young German zoologist named
Ernst Mayr, who later wrote a classic titled Animal Species and
Evolution after having jungles and mountains in the wilds of
Dutch New Guinea to collect plants and animals (Coyne, 2009).
Ernst is credited for the finding that there are discontinuities in
nature that are so clear that this finding has become an objective
fact. The discontinuity of nature is what led to a gap in research
and in the end, a. Charles Darwin failed to answer the question
as to how evolution can produce groups of animals and plants
that are discrete and discontinuous, separated from others by
gaps in appearance and behavior and how these groups arose
from the problem of speciation (Coyne, 2009).
The problem of speciation was in fact not seriously
addressed until the mid-1930s.
Ernst Mayr and the Russian geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky
were the first to realize the idea of gene pools that connect the
genetic DNA of different classes of species to each other. In
1942 Mayr developed an explanation of species that has become
the gold standard for evolutionary biology (Coyne, 2009). Using
the reproductive standard for species status, Mayr explained a
species as a cluster of interbreeding natural populations that are
reproductively isolated from other such clusters. This definition
is known as the biological species concept, or BSC (Coyne,
2009).

According to the BSC, a species is a reproductive community—
a gene pool, this means that a species is also an evolutionary
community (Coyne, 2006).
Chapter Eight: What About Us?
This chapter explores the origin of human beings and our
relations with our ancestors. It highlights the paths taken from
Darwin’s theories on evolution to Raymond Dart’s discovery of
one of the most significant fossils of the 1900s.
Ever since Dart’s period, paleoanthropologists, geneticists, and
molecular biologists have used fossils and DNA sequences to
determine our place in the line of evolution (Coyne, 2009). We
are apes stemmed from other apes, and our nearest cousin is the
chimpanzee, whose ancestors diverged from our own some
million years ago in Africa. These are irrefutable facts. And
instead of fading our humanity, they should produce satisfaction
and wonder, for they connect us to all organisms, the living and
the dead (Coyne, 2009).
In 1871, the human fossil record constituted only a few
bones of the late-appearing Neanderthals—too humanlike to
count as a missing link between ourselves and apes (Coyne,
2009). They were considered instead as a deviant population of
Homo sapiens.
“Humanness” genes have become almost a Holy Grail of
evolutionary biology, with many laboratories engaged in the
search (Coyne, 2009). The first effort to discover them was
done in 1975 by Mary-Claire King and Allan Wilson, at the
University of California. Their findings were astonishing.
Watching at protein sequences retrieved from humans and
chimpanzees, they realized that they varied on average by only
about 1 percent (Coyne, 2009).
The existence of diverse races in humans illustrates that
our populations were geographically separated long enough to
allow some genetic divergence to occur (Coyne, 2009). Direct
genetic evidence, amassed over the last three decades,
demonstrates that solely about 10 to 15 percent of all genetic

discrepancy in humans is signified by alterations between
“races” that are recognized by alteration in physical appearance.
The remainder of the genetic variation, 85 to 90 percent, occurs
among individuals within races (Coyne, 2009).
References
Winther, R. G. (2015). The structure of scientific theories.
Allmon, W. D., & Yacobucci, M. (2016). Studying species in
the fossil record: a review and
recommendations for a more unified approach. Species and
speciation in the fossil record,
59-120.
Brusatte, S. L., O’Connor, J. K., & Jarvis, E. D. (2015). The
origin and diversification of birds.
Current Biology, 25(19), R888-R898.
Gordon, D. (2015). Fishapod in the Rocks: Fossils and Biblical
Creation Texts. Theology and
Science, 13(4), 446-456.
Zwinger, A. (2015). Downcanyon: A naturalist explores the
Colorado River through the Grand

Canyon: University of Arizona Press.
Coyne, J. A. (2009). Why Evolution is True. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 - What Is
Evolution?
Chapter 2 - Written in the
Rocks
Chapter 3 - Remnants:
Vestiges, Embryos, and Bad
Design
Chapter 4 - The Geography of
Life
Chapter 5 - The Engine of
Evolution
Chapter 6 - How Sex Drives
Evolution
Chapter 7 - The Origin of
Species

Chapter 8 - What About Us?
Chapter 9 - Evolution Redux
Notes
Glossary
Suggestions for Further
Reading
References
Illustration Credits
Index
“A stunning achievement.
Coyne has produced a classic
—whether you are an expert
or novice in science, a friend
or foe of evolutionary
biology, reading Why
Evolution Is True is bound to
be an enlightening
experience.”
—Neil Shubin, author of
YourInner Fish
“Jerry Coyne has long been
one of the world’s most
skillful defenders of
evolutionary science in the
face of religious

obscurantism. In Why
Evolution Is True, he has
produced an indispensable
book: the single, accessible
volume that makes the case
for evolution. But Coyne has
delivered much more than the
latest volley in our ‘culture
war’; he has given us an
utterly fascinating, lucid, and
beautifully written account of
our place in the natural world.
If you want to better
understand your kinship with
the rest of life, this book is
the place to start.”
—Sam Harris, author of
The End of Faithand Letter
to a Christian Nation, and
founder of the Reason
Project
“Evolution is the foundation
of modern biology, and in
Why Evolution Is True, Jerry
Coyne masterfully explains
why. From the vast trove of
evidence that evolution

scientists have gathered,
Coyne has carefully selected
some of the most striking
examples and explained them
with equal parts grace and
authority.”
—Carl Zimmer, author
of Microcosm: E. coli and
the New Science of Life
“Jerry Coyne’s book does an
outstanding job making the
basic concepts of evolution
understandable for the
average reader. He covers
topics ranging from the fossil
record to biogeography to the
genetic mechanisms of
evolution with equal clarity,
and shows convincingly why
creationism and ’intelligent
design’ fail miserably as
science.”
—Donald R. Prothero,
professor of geology at
Occidental College, and
author of Evolution: What

the Fossils Say and Why It
Matters
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Copyright © JerryA. Coyne, 2009
All rights reserved
Illustration credits appear on page 271.
Illustrations by Kalliopi Monoyios.
Copyright © Kalliopi Monoyios, 2009.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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Why evolution is true / by JerryA.
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For Dick Lewontin
il miglior fabbro
Preface
December 20, 2005. Like
many scientists on that day, I
awoke feeling anxious. John
Jones III, a federal judge in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
was due to issuehis ruling in
the case of Kitzmiller et al.
vs. Dover Area School
District et al. It had been a
watershed trial, and Jones’s
judgment would decide how
American schoolchildren
would learnabout evolution.
The educational and
scientific crisis had begun
modestly enough, when
administrators of the Dover,
Pennsylvania, school district
met to discuss which biology
textbooks to order for the
local high school. Some

religious members of the
school board, unhappy with
the current text’s adherence
to Darwinian evolution,
suggested alternative books
that included the biblical
theory of creationism. After
heated wrangling, the board
passed a resolution requiring
biology teachers at Dover
High to read the following
statement to their ninth-grade
classes:
The Pennsylvania
Academic Standards
require students to
learn about Darwin’s
Theory of Evolution
and eventually to take
a standardized test of
which evolution is a
part. Because
Darwin’s Theory is a
theory, it continues to
be tested as new
evidence is
discovered. The

Theory is not a fact.
Gaps in the Theory
exist for which there
is no evidence....
Intelligent design is an
explanation of the
origin of life that
differs from Darwin’s
view. The reference
book Of Pandas and
People is available for
students to see if they
would like to explore
this view in an effort
to gain an
understanding of what
intelligent design
actually involves. As
is true with any
theory, students are
encouraged to keep an
open mind.
This ignited an educational
firestorm. Two of the nine
school board members
resigned, and all the biology
teachers refused to read the
statement to their classes,
protesting that “intelligent

design” was religion rather
than science. Since offering
religious instruction in public
schools violates the United
States Constitution, eleven
outraged parents took the
case to court.
The trial began on
September 26, 2005, lasting
six weeks. It was a colorful
affair, justifiablybilled as the
“Scopes Trial of our century,”
after the famous 1925 trial in
which high school teacher
John Scopes, from Dayton,
Tennessee, was convicted for
teaching that humans had
evolved. The national press
descendedon the sleepy town
of Dover, much as it had
eighty years earlier on the
sleepier town of Dayton.
Even Charles Darwin’s great-
great-grandson, Matthew
Chapman, showed up,
researching a book about the
trial.
By all accounts it was a

rout. The prosecution was
canny and well prepared, the
defense lackluster. The star
scientist testifying for the
defense admitted that his
definition of “science” was so
broad that it could include
astrology. And in the end, Of
Pandas and People was
shown to be a put-up job, a
creationist book in which the
word “creation” had simply
been replaced by the words
“intelligent design.”
But the case was not open
and shut. Judge Jones was a
George W. Bush appointee, a
devoted churchgoer, and a
conservative Republican—
not exactly pro-Darwinian
credentials. Everyone held
their breath and waited
nervously.
Five days before
Christmas, Judge Jones
handed down his decision—
in favor of evolution. He
didn’t mince words, ruling

that the school board’s policy
was one of “breathtaking
inanity,” that the defendants
had lied when claiming they
had no religious motivations,
and, most important, that
intelligent design was just
recycled creationism:
It is our view that a
reasonable, objective
observer would, after
reviewing both the
voluminous record in
this case, and our
narrative, reach the
inescapable
conclusion that ID is
an interesting
theological argument,
but that it is not
science.... In
summary, the [school
board’s] disclaimer
singles out the theory
of evolution for
special treatment,
misrepresents its
status in the scientific
community, causes

students to doubt its
validity without
scientific justification,
presents students with
a religious alternative
masquerading as a
scientific theory,
directs them to consult
a creationist text [Of
Pandas and People]
as though it were a
science resource, and
instructs students to
forego scientific
inquiry in the public
school classroom and
instead to seek out
religious instruction
elsewhere.
Jones also brushed aside
the defense’s claim that the
theory of evolution was
fatally flawed:
To be sure, Darwin’s
theory of evolution is
imperfect. However,
the fact that a

scientific theory
cannot yet render an
explanation on every
point should not be
used as a pretext to
thrust an untestable
alternative hypothesis
grounded in religion
into the science
classroom to
misrepresent well-
established scientific
propositions.
But scientific truth is
decided by scientists, not by
judges. What Jones had done
was simply prevent an
established truth from being
muddled by biased and
dogmatic opponents.
Nevertheless, his ruling was a
splendid victory for American
schoolchildren, for evolution,
and, indeed, for science itself.
All the same, it wasn’t a
time to gloat. This was
certainly not the last battle

we’d have to fight to keep
evolution from being
censored in the schools.
During more than twenty-five
years of teaching and
defending evolutionary
biology, I’ve learned that
creationism is like the
inflatable roly-poly clown I
played with as a child: when
you punch it, it briefly goes
down, but then pops back up.
And while the Dover trial is
an American story,
creationism isn’t a uniquely
American problem.
Creationists—who aren’t
necessarily Christians—are
establishing footholds in
other parts of the world,
especially the United
Kingdom, Australia, and
Turkey. The battle for
evolution seems never-
ending. And the battle is part
of a wider war, a war between
rationality and superstition.
What is at stake is nothing
less than science itselfand all
the benefits it offers to

society.
The mantra of evolution’s
opponents, whether in
America or elsewhere, is
always the same: “The theory
of evolution is in crisis.” The
implication is that there are
some profound observations
about nature that conflict with
Darwinism. But evolution is
far more than a “theory,” let
alone a theory in crisis.
Evolution is a fact. And far
from casting doubt on
Darwinism, the evidence
gathered by scientists over
the past century and a half
supports it completely,
showing that evolution
happened, and that it
happened largely as Darwin
proposed, through the
workings of natural selection.
This book lays out the
main lines of evidence for
evolution. For those who
oppose Darwinism purely as
a matter of faith, no amount

of evidence will do—theirs is
a belief not based on reason.
But for the many who find
themselves uncertain, or who
accept evolution but are not
sure how to argue their case,
this volume gives a succinct
summary of why modern
science recognizes evolution
as true. I offer it in the hope
that people everywhere may
share my wonder at the sheer
explanatory power of
Darwinian evolution, and
may face its implications
without fear.
Any book on evolutionary
biology is necessarily a
collaboration, for the field
enfolds areas as diverse as
paleontology, molecular
biology, population genetics,
and biogeography; no one
person could ever master
them all. I am grateful for the
help and advice of many
colleagues who have patiently

instructed me and corrected
my errors. These include
Richard Abbott, Spencer
Barrett, Andrew Berry,
Deborah Charlesworth, Peter
Crane, Mick Ellison, Rob
Fleischer, Peter Grant,
Matthew Harris, Jim Hopson,
David Jablonski, Farish
Jenkins, Emily Kay, Philip
Kitcher, Rich Lenski, Mark
Norell, Steve Pinker, Trevor
Price, Donald Prothero, Steve
Pruett-Jones, Bob Richards,
Callum Ross, Doug
Schemske, Paul Sereno, Neil
Shubin, Janice Spofford,
Douglas Theobald, Jason
Weir, Steve Yanoviak, and
Anne Yoder. I apologize to
those whose names have been
inadvertently omitted, and
exculpate all but myself for
any remaining errors. I am
especially grateful to
Matthew Cobb, Naomi Fein,
Hopi Hoekstra, Latha Menon,
and Brit Smith, who read and
critiqued the entire
manuscript. The book would

have been substantially
poorer without the hard work
and artistic acumen of the
illustrator, Kalliopi
Monoyios. Finally, I am
grateful to my agent, John
Brockman, who agreed that
people needed to hear the
evidence for evolution, and to
my editor at Viking Penguin,
Wendy Wolf, for her help and
support.
Introduction
Darwin matters because
evolution matters. Evolution
matters because science matters.
Science matters because it is the
preeminent story of our age, an
epic saga about who we are,
where we came from, and where
we are going.
-Michael Shermer

Among the wonders that
science has uncovered about
the universe in which we
dwell, no subject has caused
more fascination and fury
than evolution. That is
probably because no majestic
galaxy or fleeting neutrino
has implications that are as
personal. Learning about
evolution can transform us in
a deep way. It shows us our
place in the whole splendid
and extraordinary panoply of
life. It unites us with every
living thingon the earthtoday
and with myriads of creatures
long dead. Evolution gives us
the true account of our
origins, replacing the myths
that satisfied us for thousands
of years. Some find this
deeply frightening, others
ineffably thrilling.
Charles Darwin, of course,
belonged to the second group,
and expressed the beauty of
evolution in the famous final

paragraph of the book that
started it all—On the Origin
of Species (1859):
There is grandeur in
this view of life, with
its several powers,
having been originally
breathed into a few
forms or into one; and
that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on
according to the fixed
law of gravity, from
so simple a beginning
endless forms most
beautiful and most
wonderful have been,
and are being,
evolved.
But there is even more
cause for wonder. For the
process of evolution-natural
selection, the mechanism that
drove the first naked,
replicating molecule into the
diversity of millions of fossil
and living forms—is a
mechanism of staggering
simplicity and beauty. And

only those who understand it
can experience the awe that
comes with realizing how
such a straightforward
process could yield features
as diverse as the flower of the
orchid, the wing of the bat,
and the tail of the peacock.
Again in The Origin, Darwin
—imbued with Victorian
paternalism—described this
feeling:
When we no longer
look at an organic
being as a savage
looks at a ship, as
something wholly
beyond his
comprehension; when
we regard every
production of nature
as one which has had
a long history; when
we contemplate every
complex structure and
instinct as the
summing up of many
contrivances, each
useful to the

possessor,in the same
way as any great
mechanical invention
is the summing up of
the labour, the
experience, the
reason, and even the
blunders of numerous
workmen; when we
thus view each
organic being, how far
more interesting—I
speak from experience
—does the study of
natural history
become!
Darwin’s theory that all of
life was the product of
evolution, and that the
evolutionary process was
driven largely by natural
selection, has been called the
greatest idea that anyone ever
had. But it is more than just a
good theory, or even a
beautiful one. It also happens

to be true. Although the idea
of evolution itself was not
original to Darwin, the
copious evidence he mustered
in its favor convinced most
scientists and many educated
readers that life had indeed
changed over time. This took
only about ten years after The
Origin was published in
1859. But for many years
thereafter, scientists remained
skeptical about Darwin’s key
innovation: the theory of
natural selection. Indeed, if
ever there was a time when
Darwinism was “just a
theory,” or was “in crisis,” it
was the latter half of the
nineteenth century, when
evidence for the mechanism
of evolution was not clear,
and the means by which it
worked—genetics—was still
obscure. This was all sorted
out in the first few decades of
the twentieth century, and
since then the evidence for
both evolution and natural
selection has continued to

mount, crushing the scientific
opposition to Darwinism.
While biologists have
revealed many phenomena
that Darwin never imagined
—how to discern
evolutionary relationships
from DNAsequences, for one
thing—the theory presented
in The Origin of Species has,
in the main, held up
steadfastly. Today scientists
have as much confidence in
Darwinism as they do in the
existence of atoms, or in
microorganisms as the cause
of infectious disease.
Why then do we need a
book that gives the evidence
for a theory that long ago
became part of mainstream
science? After all, nobody
writes books explaining the
evidence for atoms, or for the
germtheory of disease. What
is so different about
evolution?
Nothing—and everything.

True, evolution is as solidly
established as any scientific
fact (it is, as we will learn,
more than “just a theory”),
and scientists need no more
convincing. But things are
different outside scientific
circles. To many, evolution
gnaws at their sense of self. If
evolution offers a lesson, it
seems to be that we’re not
only related to othercreatures
but, like them, are also the
product of blind and
impersonal evolutionary
forces. If humans are just one
of many outcomes of natural
selection, maybe we aren’t so
special after all. You can
understand why this doesn’t
sit well with many people
who think that we came into
being differently from other
species, as the special goal of
a divine intention. Does our
existence have any purpose or
meaning that distinguishes us
from other creatures?
Evolution is also thought to
erode morality. If, after all,

we are simply beasts, then
why not behave like beasts?
What can keep us moral if
we’re nothing more than
monkeys with big brains? No
other scientific theory
produces such angst, or such
psychological resistance.
It’s clear that this
resistance stems largely from
religion. You can find
religions without creationism,
but you never find
creationism without religion.
Many religions not only deem
humans as special, but deny
evolution by asserting that
we, like other species, were
objects of an instantaneous
creation by a deity. While
many religious people have
found a way to accommodate
evolution with their spiritual
beliefs, no such reconciliation
is possible if one adheres to
the literal truth of a special
creation. That is why
opposition to evolution is so
strong in the United States

and Turkey, where
fundamentalist beliefs are
pervasive.
Statistics showstarkly how
resistant we are to accepting
the plain scientific fact of
evolution. Despite
incontrovertible evidence for
evolution’s truth, year after
year polls show that
Americans are depressingly
suspicious about this single
branch of biology. In 2006,
for example, adults in thirty-
two countries were asked to
respond to the assertion
“Human beings, as we know
them, developed from earlier
species of animals,” by
answering whether they
considered it true, false, or
were unsure. Now, this
statement is flatly true: as we
will see, genetic and fossil
evidence shows that humans
descend from a primate

lineage that split off from our
common ancestor with the
chimpanzees roughly seven
million years ago. And yet
only 40 percent of Americans
—four in ten people—judge
the statement true (down 5
percent from 1985). This
figure is nearly matched by
the proportion of people who
say it’s false: 39 percent. And
the rest, 21 percent, are
simply unsure.
This becomes even more
remarkable when we compare
these statistics to those from
other Western countries. Of
the thirty-one other nations
surveyed, only Turkey, rife
with religious
fundamentalism, ranked
lower in accepting evolution
(25 percent accept, 75 percent
reject). Europeans, on the
other hand, score much
better, with over 80 percent
of French, Scandinavians, and
Icelandersseeing evolution as
true. In Japan, 78 percent of
people agree that humans

evolved. Imagine if America
ranked next to last among
countries accepting the
existence of atoms! People
would immediately go to
work improving education in
the physical sciences.
And evolution gets bumped
down even further when it
comes to deciding not
whether it’s true, but whether
it should be taught in the
public schools. Nearly two-
thirds of Americans feel that
if evolution is taught in the
science classroom,
creationism should be as well.
Only 12 percent—one in
eight people—think that
evolution should be taught
without mentioning a
creationist alternative.
Perhaps the “teach all sides”
argument appeals to the
American sense of fair play,
but to an educator it’s truly
disheartening. Why teach a
discredited, religiously based
theory, even one widely

believed, alongside a theory
so obviously true? It’s like
asking that shamanism be
taught in medical school
alongside Western medicine,
or astrology be presented in
psychology class as an
alternative theory of human
behavior. Perhaps the most
frightening statistic is this:
despite legal prohibitions,
nearly one in eightAmerican
high school biology teachers
admits to presenting
creationism or intelligent
design in the classroom as a
valid scientific alternative to
Darwinism. (This may not be
surprising given that one in
six teachers believes that
“God created human beings
pretty much in their present
form within the last 10,000
years.”)
Sadly, antievolutionism,
often thought to be a
peculiarly American problem,
is now spreading to other
countries, including Germany

and the United Kingdom. In
the UK, a 2006 poll by the
BBC asked two thousand
people to describe their view
of how life formed and
developed. While 48 percent
accepted the evolutionary
view, 39 percent opted for
either creationism or
intelligent design, and 13
percent didn’t know. More
than 40 percent of the
respondents thought that
either creationism or
intelligent design should be
taught in school science
classes. That isn’t so different
from the statistics from
America. And some schools
in the UK do present
intelligent design as an
alternative to evolution, an
educational tactic illegal in
the United States. With
evangelical Christianity
gaining a foothold in
mainland Europe, and
Muslim fundamentalism
spreading through the Middle

East, creationism follows in
their wake. As I write,
Turkish biologists are
fighting a rearguard action
against well-funded and
vociferous creationists in
their own country. And—the
ultimate irony—creationism
has even established a
foothold on the Galapagos
archipelago. There, on the
very land that symbolizes
evolution, the iconic islands
that inspired Darwin, a
Seventh-day Adventist school
dispenses undiluted
creationist biology to children
of all faiths.
Aside from its conflict with
fundamentalist religion, much
confusion and
misunderstanding surrounds
evolution because of a simple
lack of awareness of the
weight and variety of
evidence in its favor.
Doubtless somesimply aren’t

interested. But the problem is
more widespread than this:
it’s a lack of information.
Even many of my fellow
biologists are unacquainted
with the many lines of
evidence for evolution, and
most of my university
students, who supposedly
learned evolution in high
school, come to my courses
knowing almost nothing of
this central organizing theory
of biology. In spite of the
wide coverage of creationism
and its recent descendant,
intelligentdesign, the popular
press gives almost no
background on why scientists
accept evolution. No wonder
then that many people fall
prey to the rhetoric of
creationists and their
deliberate
mischaracterizations of
Darwinism.
Although Darwin was the
first to compile evidence for
the theory, since his time

scientific research has
uncovered a stream of new
examples showing evolution
in action. We are observing
species splitting into two, and
finding more and more fossils
capturing change in the past
—dinosaurs that have
sprouted feathers, fish that
have grown limbs, reptiles
turning into mammals. In this
book I weave together the
many threads of modern work
in genetics, paleontology,
geology, molecular biology,
anatomy, and development
that demonstrate the
“indelible stamp” of the
processes first proposed by
Darwin. We will examine
what evolution is, what it is
not, and how one tests the
validity of a theory that
inflames so many.
We will see that while
recognizing the full import of
evolution certainly requires a
profound shift in thinking, it
does not inevitably lead to the

dire consequences that
creationists always paint
when trying to dissuade
people from Darwinism.
Accepting evolution needn’t
turn you into a despairing
nihilist or rob your life of
purpose and meaning. It
won’t make you immoral, or
give you the sentiments of a
Stalin or Hitler. Nor need it
promote atheism, for
enlightened religion has
always found a way to
accommodate the advances of
science. In fact,
understanding evolution
should surely deepen and
enrich our appreciation of the
living world and our place in
it. The truth—that we, like
lions, redwoods,and frogs, all
resulted from the slow
replacement of one gene by
another, each step conferring
a tiny reproductive advantage
—is surely more satisfying
than the myth that we were
suddenly called into being
from nothing. As so often

happens, Darwin put it best:
When I view all
beings not as special
creations, but as the
lineal descendants of
some few beings
which lived long
before the first bed of
the Cambrian system
was deposited, they
seemto me to become
ennobled.
Chapter 1
What Is Evolution?
A curious
aspect of the
theory of
evolution is
that everybody
thinks he
understands it.
—Jacques Monod

If anything is true about
nature, it is that plants and
animals seem intricately and
almost perfectly designed for
living their lives. Squids and
flatfish change color and
pattern to blend in with their
surroundings, becoming
invisible to predator and prey.
Bats have radarto home in on
insects at night.
Hummingbirds, which can
hover in place and change
position in an …
2
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Preface

ONE Finding Your Inner Fish
TWO Getting a Grip
THREE Handy Genes
FOUR Teeth Everywhere
FIVE Getting Ahead
SIX The Best-Laid (Body) Plans
SEVEN Adventures in Bodybuilding
EIGHT Making Scents
NINE Vision
TEN Ears
ELEVEN The Meaning of It All
Epilogue
Notes, References, and Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Copyright
3
TO MICHELE
4

PREFACE
This book grew out of an extraordinary circumstance in
my
life. On account of faculty departures, I ended
up directing
the human anatomy course at the medical school
of the
University of Chicago. Anatomy is the course
during which
nervous first-year medical students dissect human
cadavers while learning the names and organization
of
most of the organs, holes, nerves, and vessels in
the body.
This is their grand entrance to the world of
medicine, a
formative experience on their path to becoming
physicians.
At first glance, you couldn’t have imagined a worse
candidate for the job of training the next generation
of
doctors: I’m a paleontologist who has spent most of
his
career working on fish.
It turnsout that being a paleontologist is a
huge
advantage in teaching human anatomy. Why? The
best road
mapsto human bodies lie in the bodies of
otheranimals.
The simplest way to teach students the nerves in
the

human head is to showthem the state of affairs in
sharks.
The easiest road map to their limbs lies in fish.
Reptiles are
a real help with the structure of the brain. The
reason is that
5
the bodies of thesecreatures are oftensimpler
versions of
ours.
During the summer of my second year leading
the course,
working in the Arctic, my colleagues and I
discovered fossil
fish that gave us powerful new insights into the
invasion of
land by fish over 375 million years ago. That
discovery and
my foray into teaching human anatomy led me to
explore a
profound connection. That exploration became this
book.
6
CHAPTER ONE
FINDING YOUR INNER FISH

Typical summers of my adultlife are spent in
snowand
sleet, cracking rocks on cliffs well north of
the Arctic Circle.
Mostof the time I freeze, get blisters, and find
absolutely
nothing. But if I have any luck, I find ancient
fish bones. That
may not sound like buried treasure to most people,
but to
me it is more valuable than gold.
Ancient fish bones can be a path to knowledge
about who
we are and how we got that way. We learnabout
our own
bodies in seemingly bizarre places, ranging from
the fossils
of worms and fish recovered from rocks from around
the
world to the DNAin virtually every animal
alive on earth
today. But that does not explain my confidence
about why
skeletal remains from the past—and the remains of
fish, no
less—offer cluesabout the fundamental structure of
our
bodies.
How can we visualize events that happened millions
and,
in many cases, billions of years ago?
Unfortunately, there
were no eyewitnesses; none of us was around. In

fact,
nothing that talks or has a mouth or even a
head was
7
around for most of this time.Even worse, the animals
that
existed back then have been dead and buried for so
long
their bodies are only rarely preserved. If you
consider that
over 99 percent of all species that ever livedare
now
extinct, that only a very small fraction are
preserved as
fossils, and that an even smaller fraction still are
ever found,
then any attempt to see our past seems doomed
from the
start.
DIGGINGFOSSILS—SEEING OURSELVES
I first saw one of our innerfish on a snowy
July afternoon
while studying 375-million-year-old rocks on
Ellesmere
Island, at a latitude about 80 degrees north.
My colleagues
and I had traveled up to this desolate part of
the world to
try to discover one of the key stages in the

shift from fish to
land-living animals. Sticking out of the rocks
was the snout
of a fish. And not just any fish: a fish with a
flat head. Once
we saw the flat head we knew we were on to
something. If
more of this skeleton were found inside the cliff, it
would
reveal the earlystages in the history of our
skull, our neck,
even our limbs.
What did a flat head tell me about the shift
from sea to
land? More relevant to my personal safety
and comfort, why
was I in the Arctic and not in Hawaii? The
answers to these
questions lie in the storyof how we find fossils
and how we
use them to decipher our own past.
8
Fossils are one of the major lines of evidence
that we use
to understand ourselves. (Genes and embryos are
others,
which I will discuss later.) Mostpeople do
not know that
finding fossils is somethingwe can oftendo with
surprising
precision and predictability. We work at home to

maximize
our chances of success in the field. Then we let
luck take
over.
The paradoxical relationship between planning and
chance is best described by Dwight D.
Eisenhower’s famous
remark about warfare: “In preparing for battle, I
have found
that planning is essential, but plans are useless.”
This
captures field paleontology in a nutshell. We make
all kinds
of plans to get us to promising fossil sites.
Oncewe’re there,
the entire field plan may be thrown out the
window. Facts
on the ground can change our best-laid plans.
Yet we can design expeditions to answer specific
scientific questions. Using a few simple ideas,
which I’ll talk
about below, we can predict where important
fossils might
be found. Of course, we are not successful100
percent of
the time,but we strike it rich oftenenough to
make things
interesting. I have made a career out of
doing just that:
finding earlymammals to answer questions of
mammal
origins, the earliest frogsto answer questions of
frog
origins, and someof the earliest limbed animals to

understand the origins of land-living animals.
In many ways, field paleontologists have a
significantly
easier time finding new sites today than we ever
did before.
We know more about the geology of local areas,
thanks to
9
the geological exploration undertaken by local
governments and oil and gas companies. The Internet
gives
us rapidaccess to maps, survey information,
and aerial
photos. I can even scan your backyard for promising
fossil
sites right from my laptop. To top it off, imaging
and
radiographic devices can see through somekinds of
rock
and allow us to visualize the bones inside.
Despite theseadvances, the hunt for the important
fossils is much what it was a hundred years
ago.
Paleontologists still need to look at rock—literally to
crawl
over it—and the fossils within must oftenbe
removed by
hand. So many decisions need to be made
when
prospecting for and removing fossil bone that these

processes are difficult to automate. Besides, looking at
a
monitor screen to find fossils would never be
nearly as
much fun as actually digging for them.
What makes this tricky is that fossil sites
are rare. To
maximize our odds of success, we look for the
convergence
of threethings. We look for places that have rocks
of the
right age, rocks of the right type to preserve fossils,
and
rocks that are exposed at the surface. There is
another
factor: serendipity. That I will showby example.
Our example will showus one of the greattransitions
in
the history of life: the invasion of land by fish.
For billions of
years, all life livedonly in water. Then, as of
about 365
million years ago, creatures also inhabited land. Life in
thesetwo environments is radically different. Breathing in
water requires very different organs than breathing in
air.
10
The same is true for excretion, feeding, and moving
about. A
whole new kind of body had to arise. At first

glance, the
divide between the two environments appears almost
unbridgeable. But everything changes when we
look at the
evidence; what looks impossible actually happened.
In seeking rocks of the right age, we have a
remarkable
fact on our side. The fossils in the rocks of
the world are not
arranged at random. Where they sit, and what lies
inside
them, is most definitely ordered, and we can use
this order
to design our expeditions. Billions of years of
change have
left layerupon layerof different kinds of rock in
the earth.
The working assumption, which is easy to test, is
that rocks
on the top are younger than rocks on the bottom;
this is
usually true in areasthat have a straightforward,
layer-cake
arrangement (think the Grand Canyon). But
movements of
the earth’s crust can cause faults that shift the
position of
the layers, putting olderrocks on top of
younger ones.
Fortunately, once the positions of thesefaults are
recognized, we can oftenpiece the original
sequence of
layers back together.
The fossils inside theserock layers also follow a

progression, with lower layers containing species
entirely
different from those in the layers above. If
we could quarry
a single column of rock that contained the entire
history of
life, we would find an extraordinary range of
fossils. The
lowest layers would contain little visible
evidence of life.
Layers above them would contain impressions of
a diverse
set of jellyfish-like things. Layers still higher
would have
11
creatures with skeletons, appendages, and various organs,
such as eyes.Above those would be layers
with the first
animals to have backbones. And so on. The layers
with the
first people would be found higher still. Of
course, a single
column containing the entirety of earthhistory
does not
exist. Rather, the rocks in each location on
earthrepresent
only a small sliver of time.To get the whole
picture, we
need to put the pieces together by comparing
the rocks
themselves and the fossils inside them, much
as if working

a giantjigsaw puzzle.
That a column of rocks has a progression of
fossil species
probably comes as no surprise. Less obvious is
that we can
make detailed predictions about what the species
in each
layermight actually look like by comparing them
with
species of animals that are alive today; this
information
helps us to predict the kinds of fossils
we will find in ancient
rock layers. In fact, the fossil sequences in the
world’s rocks
can be predicted by comparing ourselves with the
animals
at our local zoo or aquarium.
How can a walk through the zoo help us predict
where we
should look in the rocks to find important fossils?
A zoo
offers a greatvariety of creatures that are all
distinct in
many ways. But let’s not focus on what makes
them
distinct; to pull off our prediction, we need to
focus on what
different creatures share. We can then use the
features
common to all species to identify groups of
creatures with
similar traits. All the living things can be
organized and

arranged like a set of Russian nesting dolls,
with smaller
12
groups of animals comprisedin bigger groups of
animals.
When we do this, we discover somethingvery
fundamental
about nature.
Every species in the zoo and the aquarium has a
head and
two eyes.Call thesespecies “Everythings.” A subset of
the
creatures with a head and two eyes has limbs. Call
the
limbed species “Everythings with limbs.” A subset
of these
headed and limbed creatures has a huge brain,
walks on
two feet, and speaks. That subset is us, humans.
We could,
of course, use this way of categorizing things to
make many
more subsets, but even this threefold division has
predictive power.
The fossils inside the rocks of the world
generally follow
this order, and we can put it to use in
designing new
expeditions. To use the example above, the first
member of

the group “Everythings,” a creature with a head
and two
eyes,is found in the fossil record well before
the first
“Everything with limbs.” More precisely, the first
fish (a
card-carrying member of the “Everythings”) appears
before
the first amphibian (an “Everything with limbs”).
Obviously, we refine this by looking at more
kinds of
animals and many more characteristics that groups of
them
share, as well as by assessing the actual age of
the rocks
themselves.
In our labs, we do exactly this type of analysis
with
thousands upon thousands of characteristics and species.
We look at every bit of anatomy we can, and
oftenat large
chunks of DNA. There is so much data
that we oftenneed
13
powerful computersto showus the groups within
groups.
This approach is the foundation of biology, because
it
enables us to make hypotheses about how
creatures are
related to one another.

Besides helping us refine the groupings of life,
hundreds
of years of fossil collection have produced a
vast library, or
catalogue,of the ages of the earthand the life on it.
We can
now identify general time periods when major
changes
occurred. Interested in the origin of mammals?
Go to rocks
from the period called the Early Mesozoic;
geochemistry
tells us that theserocks are likely about 210
million years
old. Interested in the origin of primates? Go higher
in the
rock column, to the Cretaceous period, where
rocks are
about 80 million years old.
The order of fossils in the world’s rocks is
powerful
evidence of our connections to the rest of life. If,
digging in
600-million-year-old rocks, we found the earliest
jellyfish
lyingnext to the skeleton of a woodchuck, then
we would
have to rewrite our texts. That woodchuck would
have
appeared earlier in the fossil record than the
first mammal,
reptile, or even fish—before even the first worm.
Moreover,
our ancient woodchuck would tell us that much

of what we
thinkwe know about the history of the earth
and life on it is
wrong. Despite more than 150 years of people
looking for
fossils—on every continent of earthand in
virtually every
rock layerthat is accessible—this observation has
never
been made.
14
What we discover on our walk through the zoo
mirrors
how fossils are laid out in the rocks of the
world.
Let’snow return to our problem of how to find
relatives
of the first fish to walk on land. In our grouping
scheme,
thesecreatures are somewhere between the
“Everythings”
and the “Everythings with limbs.” Map this to what
we
know of the rocks, and thereis strong
geological evidence
that the period from 380 million to 365 million
years ago is

15
the critical time.The younger rocks in that range,
those
about 360 million years old, include diverse
kinds of
fossilized animals that we would all recognize as
amphibians or reptiles. My colleague Jenny Clack
at
Cambridge University and others have uncovered
amphibians from rocks in Greenlandthat are about
365
million years old. With their necks, their ears, and
their four
legs, they do not look like fish. But in rocks that
are about
385 million years old, we find whole fish that
look like, well,
fish. They have fins, conical heads, and scales; and
they have
no necks. Given this, it is probably no great
surprise that we
should focus on rocks about 375 million
years old to find
evidence of the transition between fish and land-living
animals.
We have settled on a time period to research,
and so have
identified the layers of the geological column
we wish to
investigate. Now the challenge is to find rocks
that were
formed under conditions capable of preserving

fossils.
Rocks form in different kinds of environments
and these
initial settings leave distinct signatures on the
rock layers.
Volcanic rocks are mostly out. No fish that we
know of can
live in lava. And even if such a fish existed, its
fossilized
bones would not survive the superheated
conditions in
which basalts, rhyolites, granites, and otherigneous
rocks
are formed. We can also ignore metamorphic rocks,
such as
schist and marble, for they have undergone either
superheating or extreme pressure sincetheir initial
formation. Whatever fossils might have been
preserved in
16
them have long sincedisappeared. Idealto preserve fossils
are sedimentary rocks: limestones, sandstones,
silt-stones,
and shales. Compared with volcanic and metamorphic
rocks, theseare formed by more gentle processes,
including
the action of rivers, lakes, and seas. Not only
are animals
likely to live in such environments, but the
sedimentary
processes make theserocks more likely places to
preserve

fossils. For example, in an ocean or lake,
particles
constantlysettle out of the water and are
deposited on the
bottom. Over time,as theseparticles accumulate, they
are
compressed by new, overriding layers. The gradual
compression, coupled with chemical processes happening
inside the rocks over long periods of time,means
that any
skeletons contained in the rocks stand a decent
chance of
fossilizing. Similar processes happen in and along
streams.
The general rule is that the gentler the flow of
the stream or
river, the better preserved the fossils.
Every rock sitting on the ground has a storyto
tell: the
storyof what the world looked like as that
particular rock
formed. Inside the rock is evidence of past
climates and
surroundings oftenvastly different from those of
today.
Sometimes, the disconnect between present and
past could
not be sharper. Take the extreme example of Mount
Everest, near whose top, at an altitude of over
five miles, lie
rocks from an ancient sea floor. Go to the
North Face almost
within sight of the famous Hillary Step,and you
can find
fossilized seashells. Similarly, where we work in the

Arctic,
temperatures can reach minus 40 degrees
Fahrenheit in the
17
winter. Yet inside someof the region’s rocks
are remnants
of an ancient tropical delta, almost like the
Amazon:
fossilized plants and fish that could have thrived
only in
warm, humid locales. The presence of warm-
adapted
species at what today are extreme altitudes and
latitudes
attests to how much our planet can change:
mountainsrise
and fall, climates warm and cool, and continentsmove
about. Oncewe come to gripswith the vastness of
time and
the extraordinary ways our planet has changed, we
will be
in a position to put this information to use in
designing new
fossil-hunting expeditions.
If we are interested in understanding the origin of
limbed
animals, we can now restrict our search to rocks
that are
roughly 375 million to 380 million years old
and that were
formed in oceans, lakes, or streams. Rule out

volcanic rocks
and metamorphic rocks, and our search image
for
promising sites comes into better focus.
We are only partly on the way to designing a
new
expedition, however. It does us no good if our
promising
sedimentary rocks of the right age are buried
deep inside
the earth, or if they are covered with grass, or
shopping
malls, or cities. We’d be digging blindly. As
you can imagine,
drilling a well hole to find a fossil offers a
low probability of
success, rather like throwing darts at a dartboard
hidden
behind a closet door.
The best places to look are those where we
can walk for
miles over the rock to discover areaswhere bones
are
“weathering out.” Fossil bones are oftenharder
than the
18
surrounding rock and so erode at a slightly
slower rate and
present a raised profile on the rock surface.
Consequently,

we like to walk over bare bedrock, find a smattering
of
bones on the surface, then dig in.
So here is the trick to designing a new fossil
expedition:
find rocks that are of the right age, of the right
type
(sedimentary), and well exposed, and we are in
business.
Idealfossil-hunting sites have little soil cover and little
vegetation, and have been subject to few human
disturbances. Is it any surprise that a significant
fraction of
discoveries happen in desert areas? In the
Gobi Desert. In
the Sahara. In Utah. In Arctic deserts, such as
Greenland.
This all sounds very logical, but let’s not forget
serendipity. In fact, it was serendipity that put
our team
onto the trail of our innerfish. Our first important
discoveries didn’t happen in a desert, but
along a roadside
in central Pennsylvania where the exposures could
hardly
have been worse. To top it off, we were looking
thereonly
because we did not have much money.
It takesa lot of money and time to go to
Greenlandor the
Sahara Desert. In contrast, a local project doesn’t
require
big research grants, only money for gas and

turnpike tolls.
These are critical variables for a young
graduate student or
a newly hiredcollege teacher. When I started
my first job in
Philadelphia, the lure was a group of rocks
collectively
known as the Catskill Formationof Pennsylvania.
This
formation has been extensively studied for over 150
years.
Its age was well known and spanned the Late
Devonian.In
19
addition, its rocks were perfect to preserve early
limbed
animals and their closest relatives. To understand
this, it is
best to have an image of what Pennsylvania looked
like
back in the Devonian.Remove the image of
present-day
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or Harrisburg from your
mind and
thinkof the Amazon River delta. There were
highlands in
the eastern part of the state. A series of
streams running
east to west drained thesemountains, ending in a
largesea
where Pittsburghis today.
It is hard to imagine better conditions to

find fossils,
except that central Pennsylvania is covered in
towns,
forests, and fields. As for the exposures, they
are mostly
where the Pennsylvania Department of
Transportation
(PennDOT) has decided to put big roads. When
PennDOT
builds a highway, it blasts. When it blasts,
it exposes rock.
It’s not always the best exposure, but we take what
we can
get. With cheap science, you get what you pay for.
And then thereis also serendipity of a different
order: in
1993, Ted Daeschler arrived to study paleontology
under
my supervision. This partnership was to change
both our
lives. Our different temperaments are perfectly
matched: I
have ants in my pants and am always thinking of
the next
place to look;Ted is patient and knows when
to sit on a site
to mine it for its riches. Ted and I began a
survey of the
Devonian rocks of Pennsylvania in hopes of
finding new
evidence on the origin of limbs. We began by
driving to
virtually every largeroadcut in the eastern part of
the state.

To our greatsurprise, shortly after we began the
survey,
20
Ted found a marvelousshoulder bone. We named
its owner
Hynerpeton, a name that translates from Greek as
“little
creeping animal from Hyner.” Hyner, Pennsylvania, is
the
nearest town. Hynerpeton had a very robust
shoulder, which
indicates a creature that likely had very powerful
appendages. Unfortunately, we were never able to
find the
whole skeleton of the animal. The exposures were
too
limited. By? You guessed it: vegetation, houses,
and
shopping malls.
Along the roads in Pennsylvania, we were looking
at an
ancient river delta, much like the Amazon today.
The
state of Pennsylvania (bottom) with the Devonian
topography mapped above it.
21

After the discovery of Hynerpeton and otherfossils
from
theserocks, Ted and I were champing at the bit
for better-
exposed rock.If our entire scientific enterprise was
going
to be based on recovering bits and pieces,
then we could
address only very limited questions. So we took a
“textbook” approach, looking for well-exposed rocks
of the
right age and the right type in desert regions,
meaning that
we wouldn’t have made the biggest discovery of
our careers
if not for an introductory geology textbook.
Originallywe were looking at Alaska and the Yukon
as
potential venues for a new expedition, largely
because of
relevant discoveries made by otherteams. We
ended up
getting into a bit of an argument/debate about
some
geological esoterica, and in the heat of the
moment, one of
us pulled the lucky geology textbook from a
desk. While
riffling through the pages to find out which
one of us was
right, we found a diagram. The diagram took
our breath
away; it showed everything we were looking
for.

The argument stopped, and planning for a new field
expedition began.
On the basisof previous discoveries made in
slightly
younger rocks, we believed that ancient freshwater
streams
were the best environment in which to begin
our hunt.This
diagram showed threeareaswith Devonian freshwater
rocks, each with a river delta system. First, thereis
the east
coastof Greenland. This is home to Jenny
Clack’s fossil, a
very earlycreature with limbs and one of the earliest
known tetrapods. Then thereis eastern North
America,
22
where we had already worked, home to
Hynerpeton. And
thereis a third area, largeand running east–west across
the
Canadian Arctic. There are no trees, dirt, or
cities in the
Arctic. The chances were good that rocks of the
right age
and type would be extremely well exposed.
The Canadian Arctic exposures were well known,
particularly to the Canadian geologists and
paleobotanists

who had already mapped them. In fact, Ashton
Embry, the
leader of the teams that did much of this
work, had
described the geology of the Devonian Canadian rocks
as
identical in many ways to the geology of
Pennsylvania’s.
Ted and I were ready to pack our bags the minute
we read
this phrase. The lessons we had learned on the
highways of
Pennsylvania could help us in the High Arctic of
Canada.
Remarkably, the Arctic rocks are even olderthan
the
fossil beds of Greenlandand Pennsylvania. So the
area
perfectly fit all threeof our criteria: age, type, and
exposure.
Even better, it was unknown to vertebrate
paleontologists,
and therefore un-prospected for fossils.
23
The map that started it all. This map of North
America
captures what we look for in a nutshell. The
different
kinds of shading reflect where Devonian age
rocks,

whether marine or freshwater, are exposed. Three
areasthat were once river deltas are labeled. Modified
from figure 13.1,R. H. Dott and R. L. Batten,
Evolution of
the Earth (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988).
Reproduced
with the permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies.
Our new challenges were totally different from those
we
24
faced in Pennsylvania. Along the highways in
Pennsylvania,
we risked being hit by the trucks that
whizzed by as we
looked for fossils. In the Arctic we risked
being eaten by
polarbears, running out of food, or being
marooned by bad
weather. No longer could we pack sandwiches in
the car and
driveto the fossil beds. We now had to spend
at least eight
days planning for every single day spent in
the field,
because the rocks were accessible only by air and
the
nearest supply base was 250 miles away. We
could fly in
only enough food and supplies for our crew, plus a
slender

safety margin. And, most important, the plane’s
strict
weight limits meant that we could take out
only a small
fraction of the fossils that we found. Couple
those
limitations with the shortwindow of time during
which we
can actually work in the Arctic every year, and
you can see
that the frustrations we faced were completely
new and
daunting.
Enter my graduate adviser, Dr. Farish A.
Jenkins, Jr., from
Harvard. Farish had led expeditions to Greenland
for years
and had the experience necessary to pull this venture
off.
The team was set. Three academic generations: Ted,
my
former student; Farish, my graduate adviser; and I
were
going to march up to the Arctic to try to
discover evidence
of the shift from fish to land-living animal.
There is no field manual for Arctic
paleontology. We
received gear recommendations from friends and
colleagues, and we read books—only to realize
that nothing
could prepare us for the experience itself. At
no time is this

25
more sharply felt than when the helicopter drops
one off for
the first time in somegodforsaken part of the Arctic
totally
alone. The first thought is of polarbears. I
can’ttell you how
many times I’ve scanned the landscape looking
for white
specks that move. This anxiety can make you
see things. In
our first weekin the Arctic, one of the crew saw a
moving
white speck. It looked like a polarbear about
a quarter mile
away. We scrambled like Keystone Kopsfor our guns,
flares,
and whistles until we discovered that our bear was a
white
Arctic hare two hundred feet away. With no trees or
houses
by which to judge distance, you lose perspective
in the
Arctic.
The Arctic is a big, empty place. The rocks
we were
interested in are exposed over an area about 1,500
kilometers wide. The creatures we were looking
for were
about four feet long.Somehow,we needed to home
in on a
small patch of rock that had preserved our fossils.

Reviewers of grantproposals can be a ferocious
lot; they
light on this kind of difficulty all the time.A
reviewer for one
of Farish’s earlyArctic grantproposals put it best. As
this
referee wrote in his review of the proposal
(not cordially, I
might add),the odds of finding new fossils in
the Arctic
were “worse than finding the proverbialneedle in
the
haystack.”
It took us four expeditions to Ellesmere Island
over six
years to find our needle. So much for
serendipity.
We found what we were looking for by trying,
failing, and
learning from our failures. Our first sites, in the
1999 field
26
season, were way out in the western part of the
Arctic, on
Melville Island. We did not know it, but we
had been
dropped off on the edge of an ancient ocean.
The rocks were
loaded with fossils, and we found many
different kinds of

fish. The problem was that they all seemed to be
deep-
water creatures, not the kind we would expect to
find in the
shallow streams or lakesthat gave rise to land-living
animals. Using Ashton Embry’s geological
analysis, in 2000
we decided to move the expedition east to
Ellesmere Island,
because therethe rocks would contain ancient
streambeds.
It did not take long for us to begin finding
pieces of fish
bones about the size of a quarter preserved as
fossils.
…
Each Chapter has to be 1 full page each; don’t forget references
and intext citations. Make sure you use the book to reference
the information as well. This is a book report so most of the
information should come from the book as well as additional
outside references.
APA Style
This week you will be writing about chapter 6,7,8 in your text.
English 1302
Topic ProposalA. How do you pick a topic?
Know that your choice of topic is very important for your
research and that your topic proposal will be evaluated for
research worthiness before it will be approved for the research

project. Research worthiness will be evaluated on a scale of
how the topic appeals to the concerns of a common audience
and if it would have impact. You must try to find a research
angle that will provide you a meaningful research experience.
Obviously, topics that are more controversial are usually seen
as topics that are more appealing to the masses. Having said
that, what that appeals to the masses may be areas that may not
completely satisfy the research worthy criterion as these may be
topics that have not been addressed in scholarly research or
topics that have very little impact value. Such topics would
certainly be disastrous for our purpose. Therefore, I suggest that
you leave such topics out. Be aware that all topics that do not
meet the criterion of research worthiness, will have to be
reworked for a better topic.
B. Parameters for Research Proposal and Research Plan
Below are the heuristics for the topic proposal and research plan
assignment:
· Topic proposal must be two pages long.
· Topic proposal must clearly define the area that you are
studying for the research paper. Find a scope that is interesting
and narrow enough so you will be forced to research deeper
instead of broader.
· The topic must show be narrow enough for the length of the
assignment.
· The researcher must also suggest the reasons why he/she has
chosen the topic and the scope of research. The reasons can
comprise of any particular social, political, economical
hardship, or problem that communities around the world are
facing. It is also crucial for the researcher to stipulate how the
researcher is directly or indirectly impacted by it as well.
· The purpose for the topic proposal is to convince me and your
classmates that your topic is research worthy.

· After identifying the topic, it is crucial that the researcher has
a research plan—a strategy on how to get the research done.
· The purpose for the plan is for the researcher to have an
individualized timeline or plan for the completion of the final
research paper.
· The researcher is required to incorporate all the due dates
scheduled in his/her calendar into his/her plan towards the final
completion of the research paper. The plan must also
differentiate the class due date and the date when the researcher
is planning to work on it.
PAGE
1
Garrett Cooper
Devarani Arumugam
ENGL-1302-51008
24 September 2018
Topic Proposal – The need for space exploration
I have always been fascinated with the many wonders of
space. The vast majority of it is unknown and is just waiting for
man to discover its next wonder. Since I was younger I wanted
to be one of the few pioneers that explore the final frontier
known as space, but later on as I discovered more my interest to
a pioneer declined. However, my interest in space itself never
did. With everything that goes on today in politics it seems like
space exploration isn’t anyone’s interest at this time, but it
should be. Overpopulation, global warming, the every going
lack of unrenewable resources, these problems will impact the
Earth heavily in the 20-30 years. It’s even estimated that the
human race would go extinct by the year 2100 by the late

Stephen Hawkings if we don’t make space exploration a top
priority. In my paper I plan on talking about the growing need
for space exploration by addressing these issues and solving
them with the limitless expectations of space travel.
I will begin by briefly addressing the history of space
exploration. The earliest example of this would an event during
the Cold War, the Space Race. This relatively short event is
what kick started a lot of technological advancement for
western society. It was also the peak of Americans’ interest in
space exploration. Although space exploration is fairly new, it
should still be one of America’s top priority because it could
solve a lot of the nation’s problems when it comes to resources
and could be the next million-dollar idea. A lot of business type
millionaires actually invest in private companies to fund
programs like asteroid mining. Asteroid mining could supply
the world with billion dollars’ worth of resources that could
supply us for centuries.
After talking about a brief history and some of the benefits
of space exploration I would go in-depth into issues like
overpopulation and how it treats humanity’s existence. Then
after addressing each issue I will then explain how space
exploration can solve it. In many case of overpopulation, in the
next 20 years the earth’s population should grow near 10
billion. This means third world problems like hungry,
dehydration/water shortages, and wide spread diseases could
become a big issue in first world countries despite how develop
most are. With space exploration we have a few options. Either
colonize place like the Moon and Mars which are quite simple.
Each colony could hold up to millions of people. Or the more
extreme possibility would be terraforming planets which would
deserve its own few paragraphs because terraforming is very
useful.
Lastly, I could possibility talk about space exploration but
more in-depth. I could talk about it in a certain aspect. For
example, space travel. Space travel because a very intense
problem once you talk beyond our solar system. It’s still a huge

problem within our solar system but it is very manageable.
English 1302
RESEARCH PAPER
A. What is research?
If you’ve watched any detective movies, you’ll find the job of
sleuthing that leads to finding a culprit to a crime, somewhat
interesting. When investigators interview their witness, read
through files and reports, piece together clues and attempt to
uncover criminals, their search is exciting. The enthusiasm is
often attributed to the purposeful excitement of discovering the
unknown. Yet, the people who may find murder mysteries
exciting may not be aware that academic research is in its
essence similar in nature to all other research. Honest and
inquisitive research writing demands attention to details. The
research process can be tedious. However, if you see the work
contributing to new knowledge and discoveries, you may find
research work meaningful. As you consider what others have to
say about your subject, you will become an expert on the
subject in your own right. You will form an in-depth knowledge
of the field that you care about, and you will be able to
communicate that to your audience. B. Why should you
document your sources?
As with all good research, some amount of library work is
essential. When using library research, you must be careful to
keep a thorough record of all your sources. Do refer to the
annotated bibliography assignment for the necessary items
needed for documentation. In your process of researching, you
must not only document your sources, but also analyze and
evaluate your sources. You must also draw from work done by
other researchers to form, support, and extend your own
opinions. You must practice intellectual integrity by presenting
the work others have done, accurately, and by acknowledging
your sources of information. You are expected to develop a
thesis for your topic, do research on it, form a position on your
findings, and develop argumentations in support of your thesis.
C. What are the general requirements of this assignment?

You must make sure that this research paper is not a mere
report, but a true research where you address societal concerns
by exploring new ways of dealing with real life problems. The
target audience must go away feeling that they’ve learned and
discovered something new from your research findings. You
must find a way of analyzing and studying your interest area
from a fresh, new perspective. The research must allow for the
readers to see a clear link between the findings and the analysis
of the underlying issues, themes, values, assumptions or beliefs
that control current ways of looking at the problem. You must
find a way to persuade your audience to draw new meanings and
new ways of seeing the world from the argumentations,
analysis, and findings. The research paper should present your
positioning on where you stand in the conflicting opinions of
the field and how you intend to resolve it. It is extremely
important that your arguments build towards a cohesive way of
seeing the field of study from a new-fangled perspective.
D. How do you pick a topic?
Know that your choice of topic is very important for your
research and that your topic proposal will be evaluated for
research worthiness before it will be approved for the research
project. Research worthiness will be evaluated on a scale of
how the topic appeals to the concerns of a common audience
and if it would have impact on the target audience. Obviously,
topics that are more controversial are usually seen as topics that
are more appealing to the masses. Having said that, what that
appeals to the masses may be areas that may not completely
satisfy the research worthy criterion as these may be topics that
have not been addressed in scholarly research or topics that
have very little impact value. Such topics would certainly be
disastrous for our purpose. Therefore, I suggest that you leave
such topics out. Be aware that all topics that do not meet the
criterion of research worthiness, will have to be reworked for a
better topic.E. Parameters for the assignment:

For the purpose of this research, you must write an eight to
twelve-page paper (excluding the references) on the topic that
you have proposed. The research paper must be based on the
research that was proposed, documented, and researched in this
class. All papers must be double spaced and presented in Times
New Roman 12pt. font, with a one-inch margin and presented in
the MLA format. All papers must have at least 10 MLA style in-
text citation and a minimum of 10 references in a MLA style
work cited page. These references should be from those that
were listed in your annotated bibliography. All research
material referred to and cited in the work cited page must be
presented in a research portfolio. Your research portfolio must
consist of all the materials below:
Research Process Total 2,000 points
Topic Proposal 100 points
Proposal Conference 200 points
Proposal Plan 100 points
Research Question 50 points
Thesis Development 50
Outline 100 points
Research Report 100 points
Note Cards (20) 200 points
Bibliography (20) 200 points
Draft 1 100 points

Draft 2 100 points
Draft 3 100 points
Eportfolio 100points
Powerpoint Presentation 200 points
Research Evaluation 100 points
Research Paper 1,000 points
Topic Proposal and Research Plan:Below are the heuristics for
the topic proposal and research plan assignment:
· Topic proposal must be two pages long.
· Topic proposal must clearly define the area that you are
studying for the research paper.
· The topic must show be narrow enough for the length of the
assignment.
· The researcher must also suggest the reasons why he/she has
chosen to limit the research within the specific area. The
reasons can comprise of any particular social, political,
economical hardship, or problem that communities around the
world are facing. It is also crucial for the researcher to stipulate
how the researcher is directly or indirectly impacted by it as
well.
· The purpose for the topic proposal is to convince me and your
classmates that your topic is research worthy.
· After identifying the topic, it is crucial that the researcher has
a research plan.

· The purpose for the plan is for the researcher to have an
individualized timeline or plan for the completion of the final
research paper.
· The researcher is required to incorporate all the due dates
scheduled in his/her calendar into his/her plan towards the final
completion of the research paper.
PAGE
1

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