Living on Earth I: Evolution & Extinction

1. Living on Earth I:Evolution & Extinction • Presented by Dr. Richard Alley • The Pennsylvania State University

2. Student Survey: Section 1 • Survey given to two sections (1 & 2). Some questions forced agree/disagree; others allowed uncertainty. • “Well-understood biological processes caused evolution of modern humans from an ancestral population of ape-like creatures that is also ancestral to modern chimpanzees.” • Section 1 survey results: • 65% Agree. 35% Disagree. • Or • 37% Agree. 18% Disagree. 45% Unsure. Allowing uncertainty really changes answers.

3. Student Survey: Section 2 Section 2 was given: • “Biologists who improve crops to feed us or cure our diseases are efficient and useful, but when those same biologists or their classmates study changes in gene frequencies over time, those biologists are almost all completely confused and wrong about almost everything or else they are evil liars.” • Section 2 survey results: • 11% Agree. 89% Disagree. (Can “load” question to increase “pro-evolution” from 65% to 89%--could load it to increase “anti-evolution”, too.) • Or • 7% Agree. 71% Disagree. 22% Unsure.

4. Student Survey: Section 1 • “The second law of thermodynamics forbids evolution as proposed by Darwin and followers.” • Section 1 Survey Results • 31% Agree. 69% Disagree. • Or • 12% Agree. 22% Disagree. 66% Unsure. • (Much uncertainty here.)

5. Student Survey: Section 2 • “The law of conservation of information forbids evolution as proposed by Darwin and followers.” • Section 2 survey results: • 33% Agree. 67% Disagree. • Or • 9% Agree. 35% Disagree. 56% Unsure. • (Still great uncertainty here.)

6. Student Survey: Section 1 • “The complexity of living organisms demonstrates that an intelligent designer was involved.” • Section 1 survey results: • 61% Agree. 39% Disagree. • Or • 42% Agree. 31% Disagree. 27% Unsure.

7. Student Survey: Section 2 • “The complexity of living organisms demonstrates that an intelligent designer, such as a space alien, the flying spaghetti monster, or the deity or deities of some religion or religions, was involved.” • Section 2 survey results: • 48% Agree. 52% Disagree. • Or • 35% Agree. 42% Disagree. 23% Unsure. • (Listing possible designers in this fashion reduces intelligent-designer support from 61% to 48%, or 42% to 35%.)

8. Things I Notice • The way the question is asked makes a huge difference to the answers obtained; • Hence, it is likely that most polls fail to really find out what people think about the issues; • Hence, you might be skeptical of those using poll results to advance their position; • Still a bit of uncertainty on some technical issues.

9. Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument—Gnattily dressed This is the “Big Stump” fossil redwood. Photo by R. Alley.

10. The Colorado Rockies Front Range is folded up, perhaps from shallow-subduction drag.

11. West of the Front Range are the parks, occupying the low parts of the folds. This is the real South Park, viewed from Wilkerson Pass.

12. “When the mountains are overthrown and the seas uplifted, the universe at Florissant flings itself against a gnat and preserves it.” –Dr. Arthur C. Peale, Hayden Expedition Geologist, 1873 http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=2683 Fossil spider, bee, and leaf, Florissant (National Park Service Photos) http://www.nature.nps.gov/factsheetarchive/fpaleo.htm http://photo.itc.nps.gov/storage/images/flfo/flfo-Full.00004.html

13. CAUSE students, led by Paleontologist William Parker, hiking in Black Forest section of Petrified Forest National Park.

14. Many of the trees in Petrified Forest were transported in rivers, losing their branches and often their bark before being buried and petrified. The conversion to stone was caused by the difference in chemistry between the trees themselves and groundwater in the volcanic-ash-rich soils. This tree is Araucarioxylon arizonicum, an extinct relative of modern monkey-puzzle trees. Over 200 types of fossil plants are known from the park.

15. Paleontologist Bill Parker shows the CAUSE film crew the “Alpha Stump,” in the Black Forest section of Petrified Forest National Park. Unlike most of the fossil trees in the park, the “Alpha Stump” is in place, its roots in the soil where it grew about 210 million years ago.

16. The oldest known fossil bee’s nest, in a petrified tree, Petrified Forest National Park.

17. Park Paleontologist William Parker (right) and ranger and UC-Berkeley graduate student Randall Irmis (left) excavating late-Triassic (Mesozoic) giant-armored-reptile (Archosaur) plates, Petrified Forest National Park.

18. Paleontologist Randall Irmis shows CAUSE student Irene Meglis a still-sharp fossil tooth, Petrified Forest National Park.

19. The river-channel and floodplain deposits of the Jurassic (mid-Mesozoic, about 150 million years old) Morrison Formation of Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado and Utah, were tipped up after being hardened.

20. The Quarry at Dinosaur Ledge. Eleven types of dinosaurs were washed onto this sand bar perhaps in a great flood, buried, and their bones replaced by silica from groundwaters. The living types were quite different from their older relatives at Petrified Forest; much evolution occurred during the intervening 60 million years.

21. D. Roddy, Lunar and Planetary Institute, NASA, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap971117.html The 49,000-year-old, 0.7-mile-across Barringer Impact Crater of Arizona was made by a rather small meteorite, roughly 150 feet (50 m) across--tiny compared to the one that killed the dinosaurs. Notice the road on the right for scale.

22. All pictures on this page from NASA http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect18/Sect18_4.html LEFT: Impact breccia. When a meteorite hits, it breaks rocks. This core is from the Manson, Iowa impact structure. BELOW: Shocked quartz from a meteorite impact. The bright colors are from view between polarizing filters; the crossing lines are impact features. The grain is roughly 1/10 inch across. ABOVE: Gravity field of Chicxulub impact crater—the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs, on the Yucatan Peninsula. The crater is buried under younger rocks, but is quite evident here. The circular crater, between the pink arrows, is about 110 miles across.

23. BELOW: The finger is pointing to the K/T boundary bed marking the end of the dinosaurs, at Big Bend National Park. National Park Service Photo http://www2.nature.nps.gov/geology/geologic_wonders/images/KT.jpg Timothy Culler (UCB) et al., Apollo 11 Crew, NASA http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000322.html ABOVE: 1/250 in (0.1 mm) diameter cosmic spherule from the moon. Spherules such as this are well-known from impact deposits and are found in the special K/T impact bed that marks the end of the dinosaurs.

24. Richard D. Norris and the Ocean Drilling Project Leg 171B Scientific Party http://www.usssp-iodp.org/Publications/Greatest_Hits/contributors.html#n Photomicrographs by Brian Huber, Smithsonian Institution. Low-res. versions are hosted at: http://www.usssp-iodp.org/Education/resources.html More information: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/paleo/blast Sediment core from offshore South Carolina, showing the extinction across the K/T boundary. Core is 40 cm long (about 16 inches).