Evolution Essay, Research Paper

Evolution

A species cannot be created by mutating a species. No matter how many mutations occur the mutation does not evolve the species. No one has ever produced a species by means of natural selection.

About 6 hundred million years ago the earliest know fossil record of animals were know to be alive. Amber has been preserved in the earth?s crust for millions of years. Amber is a gem and is also organic. This is a fossilized material. There is jade-bearing rocks in Guatemala also.

Dinosaurs were among the largest animals to roam the earth. These enormous creatures were on earth for about 150 million years. One hundred and fifty years ago scientists started uncovering dinosaur bones and fossils. The largest animal bones found were ten times the size of the brontosaurus, the smallest were the size of a german shepherd. Dinosaurs that flew were found to have hollow bones.

The word “dinosaur” is greek for “terrible lizard”. Dinosaurs lived in the Mesozoic Era, also know as the “Age of Reptiles. The alligator, crocodile, ostrich, and the mouse are descendants of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs evolved from the sea. Scientist say that if dinosaurs were alive today they would look like a “dinosaur-man” and walk on two legs like a human and have a larger brain.

Dinosaurs are categorized into two major groups. The first saurischians. Saurischians were the largest and fiercest. Within the Saurischians were three kinds. Prosauropods(which include the Plateosaurus), sauropods(which include the ultrasaurous, apatosaurus, brontosaurus and the diplodocus), and theropods(which were meat eaters like the tyrannosaurus, ornithomimus and deinonychus). The second group was the ornithichians. There were four basic kinds of ornithichians. Ornithopods(which could walk on either two or four legs), stegosaurus(which were planteaters that had bones along their backs), ankylosaurs(a.k.a. armored dinosaurs) and ceratopsians(which were horned dinosaurs).

Then the Mesozoic Era came to a point where dinosaurs became extinct. There are two theories of how the dinosaurs became extinct. The first is that an asteroid blocked the sun, killing off all plant life. This deprived dinosaurs of food. In a matter of months all of the dinosaurs starved and died. The second of the two theories is that the continents were close together and the dinosaurs mingled and caused the spread of disease. The climate got cooler and caused death among all dinosaurs. Many people believe that dinosaurs still exist as the brontosaurus in the Congo Jungle or the Lochnest monster.

After the Mesozoic Era then came the Cenozoic Era. This began the “Age of Mammals”. Many believe that reptiles evolved into birds. Flowery plants became existent, grasslands and forests formed, monkeys, apes, large mammals, grazing animals, birds, and humans developed. The climate cooled and formed “The Ice Age”. Mammoths and other large animals became extinct. Then humans became the dominant form of life and civilization begins.