This lesson compares in detail the banding patterns seen on stained chromosomes from humans and chimpanzees, showing striking similarities. Possible evolutionary relationships are explored, as are the chromosomes and relationships of other apes. Full description.

In this lesson students prepare the components for building a Colossal Classroom Cladogram of vertebrate evolution, then put it together, showing the gradual, mosaic accumulation of the traits which humans possess. A major purpose of this is to dramatize the evidence that we (and in fact all living things) did not suddenly pop into existence, but clearly evolved as an accumulation of traits over vast ... Full description.

This lesson introduces students to the building of cladograms as evolutionary trees showing how "shared derived characters" can be used to reveal degrees of relationship. Given some groups of organisms and some of their distinguishing characteristics, the students will construct a cladogram. Given a cladogram, the students will properly interpret and analyze that cladogram in terms of recognizing ... Full description.

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 is based on an article that explains what cladistics is, why it is useful, how it is applied, and what its limitations are. Students will learn that biological classification is intimately associated with evolution; that there are many problems encountered in classification, which is evidence that the living world is a work in progress, and evolution provides an explanation for those problems. ... Full description.

This lesson is based on an essay by Stephen Jay Gould and on the related reading guide. It addresses the issue of cladistics and some of the problems encountered in the science of Systematics. Students will learn that biological classification is intimately associated with evolution. They will also learn that there are many problems encountered in classification, providing evidence that the living ... 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.

In this lesson students working in teams classify furniture, share their categories and rationales, then note how their different schemes vary arbitrarily. They then see how living organisms are classified, and note how these groupings are natural, nearly always reflecting the same ancestral relationships in nested hierarchies, regardless of the deeper criteria. Such patterns are revealed with a look ... Full description.

In this lesson students learn how classification of organisms is based on evolutionary relationships. They will also learn how primates are categorized, and how they are related. Students transfer examples (names) of primates from their location in an outline hierarchy of primate groups into a set of nested boxes reflecting that same hierarchy. A cladogram can then be drawn illustrating how these ... Full description.

In this lesson students learn that degrees of biological relationship can be inferred from comparisons of selected molecules. Students are guided through a process in which three questions are addressed by retrieving beta hemoglobin sequences from online databases. They then use online tools to compare those sequences in student-selected animals. The questions addressed are: whether bats are birds ... Full description.