HISTORY OF LIFE

1. The Origin of Life
   
2. Earth's Earliest Life
   
3. Sex and Nuclei: Eukaryotes
   
4. The Evolution of Animals
   
5. Life in a Changing World
   
6. Extinction
   
7. The Early Vertebrates
   
8. Leaving the Water
   
9. Amphibians and Reptiles
   
10. Reptiles and Thermoregulation
    
11. Triassic Takeover
    
12. Dinosaurs
    
13. Warm-Blooded Dinosaurs?
    
14. The Evolution of Flight
    
15. The Origin of Mammals
    
16. Marine Reptiles
    
17. Why Flowers are Beautiful
    
18. The End of the Dinosaurs
    
19. Cenozoic Mammals
    
20. Geography and Evolution
    
21. Primates
    
22. Evolving Toward Humans
    
23. The Ice Age
    
24. Humans and the Ice Age
    

Earth's Earliest Life

Introduction

• Introducing Fossils
• Lots of Fossil Web Links at West's Geology Directory
• Prof. Cowen's Mini-essay on Biases in the Fossil Record
• Introduction to Images of Insects in Amber
• World of Amber
• 850 Million Year Old Cyanobacteria Fossils in Chert from Australia
• California Fossil Sites
• Ichnology, the Study of Trace Fossils
• A Book by Niles Eldridge et al., Fossils: The Evolution and Extinction of Species.
  
  

How Paleobiology Works

• Unraveling Geological Time

How Do We Know the Age of a Fossil

• How Geologists Measure Relative Time
• Explanation of Stratigraphy
• Comparing Geographically Separated Areas by Correlation
• An Activity to Teach Relative Dating
• How Geologists Measure Absolute Time
• Calculating Absolute Age by Radiometric Methods
• Geological Time Scale
• A Christian Perspective on Radiometric Method of Dating
• Lecture Notes on Radiometric Dating
• Official and Detailed Geological Society of America 1983 Geological Time Scale or Here
• A Self-Correcting Geological Time Scale Test
• Answers for Geological Time Scale Test
• Douglas Henderson's Illustrated Geological Time Line
• Dr. Bob's Pnemonic Devices for Remembering Geological Periods
• The Geologic Time Scale from the USGS Website
• Don Wise Compiles Problems with the Creationist Geologic Time Scale

Earth's Oldest Rocks

• Only Meteorites Survive from the Hadeon Time
• The Oldest Rocks and Fossils During the Archaen Eon
• If You REALLY Want Details on Life as Detected from Uranium in Archaen Rocks

Earth's Oldest Cells

• Dr. Awramik on the Earliest Microfossils
• Bacteria Fossils
• Cyanobacteria Fossils including Stromatolites
• Dr. Awramik on Stromatolites
• Stromatolites at Shark Bay, W. Australia
• Another Image of Shark Bay Stromatolites
• Introduction to Living Cyanobacteria
• A Webserver for Cyanobacterial Research: Cyanosite
• Photosynthetic Pigments

Banded Iron Formations (BIFs)

• Good Overview of the Precambrian and BIFs
• Minnesota BIFs

The Oxygen Revolution

• Introduction to the Proterozoic Eon
• The 'Revolution' was REALLY Ancient Global Pollution
• On-line Research Paper on Build-up of Oxygen on Earth
• Lecture notes on Cellular Respiration / Brief / more.
• Comparison of Respiration and Photosynthesis
• Earth's Earliest Life / Organism Links
• BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY: BACTERIA AND ARCHAEANS