Life Through Time – Evolutionary Palaeontology (week 8)
The slides (colour) for the final week’s class can be downloaded here: 2013_LifeThruTime_Lect8_colour. I will add a black and white version shortly.
The links for the class are as follows:
“Big Bang Big Boom” is a 10-minute animation of the evolution of life, and is well worth a watch. Click here to view it.
Did bird brains help them survive the end-Cretaceous extinction? Read about it here.
(And the new Cretaceous bird fossil from China with possible eggs preserved can be admired here)
What were the multituberculates? Find out here.
The origins of marsupials can be read about here.
The preservation of colour in the fossil record can be read about here.
An overview of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and what happened to life on Earth can be read here.
There are various interesting websites on how whales evolved from land mammals, such as this one, this one, and this one.
The Messinian Salinity Crisis can be read about here.
A Smithsonian website on human evolution can be read here.
The Neanderthal In Us, a press release about the Neanderthal genome, suggesting interbreeding with humans, can be downloaded here: The_Neanderthal_in_us
However, the Neanderthal interbreeding theory has been challenged.
