1. Are birds more closely related to reptiles or mammals?

2. How do we know? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5KjCn7B6mU reptiles!
Pose the question "How do we know?" to evaluate students' prior knowledge to the topic.
How do we know?

3. Where’s the proof? Fossil Records Homologous structures
Vestigial Structures
Molecular biology
Comparative Embryology

4. Evidence for Evolution in the Fossil Record

5. What is a fossil? How do they form?
This slide shows multiple generations of organisms becoming fossils, but also provides an essential concept that the movement of the Earth explains why we find water-based organisms in areas that are now dry and vice verse. Use this slide to explain how the movement of the Earth affects fossil formation and where we find them. Also initiate the explanation of the transition from living organism to fossil.

6. What do fossils tell us?
This slide presents a more specific example than the previous one. It provides an illustration of the transition from sea to land. Hopefully by presenting the student with a specific example like this, they will be better able to visualize how the physical evidence we have amassed supports evolution. This slide also presents the basic pattern of tetrapod limbs still present today. Ask the students how one organism changing could lead to a whole range of other possibilities.
Ask students how quickly this transition took place. It may be an opportunity to explore an area of confusion on the timeframe of evolution. Remind them that this change took millions of years and not just a few generations.

7. Ask the class to brainstorm what fossils like these may tell us about a species and its evolution. On the left is an ancestor of modern birds with a beak and wing-like limbs. On the right, a dinosaur. Using what they know about fossils, how can they compare these images?
Dinosaur
Bird
FOSSILS!

8. Fossils
Fossils prove the existence of many different organisms through time that are related to existing organisms.
These fossils prove that there were living organisms from which every living thing today was derived.

9. How do we know what animals are related to each other
How do we know what animals are related to each other? Homologous structures
Common physical structures, like bones, indicate either common ancestors or similar responses to evolutionary challenges.
Descendants of a common ancestor (the common ancestor is believed to be the first organism (tetrapod) that crawled out of the sea onto land.
Ask students what these limbs resemble and connect it back to slide 12 and Tiktaalik. Ask students how these limbs have changed to be what they are now. Ask students to describe the process of how a specific limb changed. For example, you could ask them if they have a cat and to describe things the cat does. Maybe they are familiar with it catching other animals (mice, birds, etc.) and you can talk about how the limb changed because changes slowly added up in a way that was most advantageous for the species.

10. Teacher Instructions: Emphasize the real world example of bird evolution from dinosaurs.

11. Homologous Structures
Homologous structures provide strong evidence that all four-limbed vertebrates have descended, with modifications, from a common ancestor.

12. What is an analogous structure, and how is it different from a homologous structure?
Analogous structures have a SIMILAR function but DIFFERENT evolutionary origin.
Homologous structures are similar in structure AND show common ancestry!

13. Vestigial Structures
An organ or part of the body that is reduced to little or no function

14. Comparative Embryology

15. Comparative Embryology
There are many similarities in the early stages of development of vertebrates, which suggests common ancestry.

16. Molecular Evidence

17. DNA: Present in ALL LIVING THINGS!
*What does this tell us about when DNA must have evolved?
*Is DNA an effective way of storing information?

18. Genetic Similarities Between Species
Explain to students that this is a picture of the similarities of nucleotide pairs (x axis) from different species. They are all compared to the human sequence (which would be completely green, because it would match 100 percent.
-Emphasize that many of the same genes exist between these organisms.
Another human? 100% - All humans have the same genes, but some of these genes contain sequence differences that make each person unique.
A chimpanzee? 98% - Chimpanzees are the closest living species to humans.
A mouse? 92% - All mammals are quite similar genetically.
A fruit fly? 44% - Studies of fruit flies have shown how shared genes govern the growth and structure of both insects and mammals.
Yeast? 26% - Yeasts are single-celled organisms, but they have many housekeeping genes that are the same as the genes in humans, such as those that enable energy to be derived from the breakdown of sugars.
A weed (thale cress)? 18% - Plants have many metabolic differences from humans. For example, they use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide gas to sugars. But they also have similarities in their housekeeping genes.

19. Similarities between Plant and Animal Cells: LOTS!
Note that plants and animals have similarities on a cellular level that scientists can look at. These similarities were probably present in the the common ancestor of these two types of organism, which was probably one of the first eukaryotic cells to exist on earth.
Make sure to emphasize that this is why when scientists learned about the genetic similarities of organisms, they were able to reinforce Darwin’s theory even more! They could make more links between organisms that don’t look very similar at all. Scientists were able to test chloroplast and mitochondria and found that these two organelles having their own DNA. Scientists speculate that these organelles were once bacteria that lived outside of cells. Once they got inside cells, however, they began to be incorporated into their cell cycle and replicate when the cells replicated.
Ask students to think about what they would be able to find out about the similarities between trees and plants…
1. before microscopes
2. after microscopes and before DNA analysis
3.Today

20. Molecular Biology
Protein synthesis (making proteins through transcription & translation) is essentially the same in all organisms.
Proteins in all organisms are composed of the same 20 amino acids.
DNA is very similar between two closely related organisms.
This is evidence that even very diverse organisms have a common ancestor!!

21. How Does this Relate to Bird Evolution?
What do birds and lizards share in common in their biochemistry that other organisms don’t share?
-KERATIN!
-Keratin is used by reptiles to make scales on the outside of their bodies, and by birds to make feathers.

22.
reptiles!
How do we know?