In this lesson amino acid sequences in cytochrome-c are compared for several different animals, and the number of differences found are used to infer degrees of relationship. This data is also compared with a cladogram constructed for those same animals from their anatomical features, providing an example of independent confirmation. Full description.

This lesson plan is part of the Center for Educational Resources (CERES), a series of web-based astronomy lessons created by a team of master teachers, university faculty, and NASA researchers. In this lesson, students gain a deeper understanding of cosmology by gathering evidence for the Big Bang theory. They explore the Hubble Law and create a model of the expanding universe. This lesson contains ... Full description.

In this lesson, students experience the historical discovery of fossils which increasingly link whales to earlier land-dwelling mammals. This experience also reveals how scientists can make predictions about past events based on the theory that whales evolved from certain groups of early land mammals. Such predictions suggest the age and location of sediments where fossils of early whales would most ... Full description.

In this lesson students compare differences in amino acids in the beta hemoglobin from representative primates, complete a matrix of those differences, and from these data, construct and interpret cladograms as they reflect relationships and timing of divergence. Full description.

In this lesson, students will learn that some evolutionary change is rapid and discontinuous, and some change is gradual; how fossil evidence can provide clues to the past; and how speciation may account for evolutionary branching and diversification. Fossil shells of a land snail are arranged by layers of age into a sequence pattern suggesting gradual change, or punctuated equilibria. Students will ... Full description.

This lesson uses a series of nested plastic bags as a 3-dimensional Venn diagram to illustrate the hierarchical grouping of organisms based on their shared derived characters, thus forming the basis of a cladogram. Students will learn that the groups-within-groups hierarchical pattern of Linnaean classification is a result of both extinction and branching from common descent. Full description.

This lesson demonstrates how natural selection operates, using different colored paper chips to represent prey and a piece of fabric as a background (the environment). The predator (student) will hunt (select chips) to show that the best adapted, by color, are NOT chosen, and others which are poorly adapted (by standing out) ARE chosen (removed). Thus, the best adapted survive and reproduce to pass ... Full description.

In this lesson students compare the DNA sequence data for a portion of the rat GULO gene to the corresponding sequence in the inactive GULO gene (pseudogene) in humans, chimpanzees, orangutans, and crab-eating macaques by identifying the shared sequences in their alignment. They compare the pseudogene sequences and note a shared deletion. In addition, students do an alignment for the first 25 codons ... Full description.

In this lesson, students read and discuss selected and edited excerpts from the essays of Stephen Jay Gould on the subject of contrivances. Students learn that many features of modern organisms reflect the structure of their ancestors in ways that are not adaptive. They also learn that one of the best indicators of evolution is not the examples of perfect adaptations, but of the relatively imperfect ... Full description.

In this lesson about speciation and its role in evolution, different subspecies of a California salamander are placed on a grid map of California according to where samples were collected. Discussion focuses on patterns of their distribution, their likely evolutionary relationships, and probable sequence of formation from the original form (speciation). Full description.