Evolution

The end Cretaceous mass extinction 65 million years ago is associated with the end of the dinosaurs. Virtually no large land animals survived. Plants were also affected and tropical marine life was decimated. At this time, the oceans flooded up to 40% of the continents. What would become us now had a chance to flourish. We were very small mammals and we had a lot of land to fill.

Of course the word 'opportunity' is, in this instance, a value-judgement. I would imagine that the organisms that were unable to adapt to the radically changing environments during past extinction waves would not have seen it as an opportune time at all. But, then, one man's death is often another man's bread, and there will always be those able to profit from even the most horrible disasters.

There is no reason to think that the hummingbird is an evolutionary dead end. Granted, the hummingbird is an animal adapted to a unique niche, and a radical change in circumstances could mean the extinction of some of its species - but the same is true for many if not most lifeforms.

The theories are evolution deal with the fact that every being on the planet today came from a now-extinct species. This goes for humans as well. Scientists believe that humans evolved from now-extinct mammals during the Late Cretaceous period. Evidence proves people came from a member of the gibbon family.

Bees and ants are highly mobile, in comparison to plants. Hence, the range of pollination, whihc is to say, the amount of distance that can be traveled to find other members of the same plant species with which to cross pollinate, is tremendously increased by the use of mobile, pollinating animals. In evolutionary terms, it was easier to evolve a symbiotic relationship with bees, than it would have been to evolve into a mobile plant.

The assumptions of the evolutionary theory of social change include the belief that societies progress through stages of development, that there is a unilinear path of societal evolution, and that societies evolve from simple to complex forms. This theory suggests that social change is inevitable and that it is driven by factors such as technological advancements and cultural developments.

Yes. Pretty much everything is part of the food chain. If it walks, swims, flies, or crawls, something wants to eat it.

Dependency theory suggests that global inequality is largely due to the exploitation of developing countries by developed countries. It emphasizes the role of historical colonialism and neocolonial practices in perpetuating underdevelopment. Dependency theorists argue that developing countries are structurally dependent on developed countries for resources, technology, and markets, leading to unequal power relations.

Karl Marx's social evolution theory posits that societies evolve through a series of stages driven by changes in the mode of production. He believed that history is characterized by class struggle between the ruling class (bourgeoisie) and the working class (proletariat), leading to social revolution and the eventual establishment of a classless society. Marx identified the stages of primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism in this evolutionary process.

There are no pure Neanderthals today; they died out as a group probably tens of thousands of years ago. But all the current evidence points to the belief that they were real indeed. They were so real that we all have some Neanderthal DNA in us resulting from the interbreeding that took place.

Added:

The estimate on the last Neanderthal population's die out is at about thirty seven thousand years ago.

Reflex covers a lot of ground, so an example of a simple reflex in times of possible danger. If one sees a stick on the trail in snake country ( assume poison snake country ) one reflexively jumps to one side regardless and knowing afterwards that this is stick instead of a snake keeps one alive anyway. Humans evolved in snake countries as out ancestors dod and the organism that reflexively jumped away, snake or stick, is the organism that left more decedents that had the same reflex.

The genus Homo first appeared in the fossil record around 2.5 million years ago in Africa. Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) appeared around 200,000 years ago.

Carolinus Linneas. Swedish and the father of taxonomy. Basically, we use his binomial system to this day.

Lamarck's theory of evolution proposed that traits acquired during the lifetime of the parent were genetically passed on to children. Some animal might, according to Lamarck's theory, learn a novel way of obtaining food, and then its children would be born with this novel mechanism already in place.

Darwin, contrarily, proposed that lineages evolved new traits though natural selection: by the elimination of lineages that do *not* possess a certain trait.

Darwin's theory made it clear that ancestral relationships existed between species, and the use of these relationships became the overarching consideration of classification schemes. It wasn't until the "modern synthesis" of molecular biology that we were able to resolve some conflicts inherent in classification schemes based solely on interpreted physiological relationships.

Linnaeus had made great strides in the design of the hierarchical taxonomy, and that taxonomy compellingly demonstrated the existence of evolutionary change.

Because that comet, which sent many dinosaurs into extinction, caused the mammals to go through a large adaptive radiation event that allowed the vast variation in mammals we see today, especially the variations called apes.

Some popular theories of entrepreneurship include effectuation theory, which focuses on how entrepreneurs make decisions under uncertainty; opportunity recognition theory, which looks at how entrepreneurs identify and exploit opportunities; and social network theory, which emphasizes the importance of social connections in the entrepreneurial process. Each theory offers different insights into the behaviors and strategies of entrepreneurs.

The influence of providing an explanatory mechanism for what was obvious to Darwin; species arose and species went extinct.

System theory focuses on understanding systems as a whole, emphasizing interactions and relationships among components. It considers feedback loops, emergence of properties at the system level, and the interconnectedness of parts within a system. System theory is used to analyze complex systems across various disciplines, helping to identify patterns, behaviors, and dynamics within the system.

Unfortunately, the evolution of man cannot be traced in a continuous way. This is why many people doubt that the theory of evolution is more than a theory. Scientific evidence does follow the evolution of man but there are gaps that are not explained.

Morphological evidence.
Genetic and genomic evidence.
Geographical evidence.

Actually, it was Lamarck who earlier introduced the giraffe as an example for evolution - Lamarckian evolution, to be sure. Lamarck proposed that there was some mechanism by which the short-necked ancestors of giraffes could acquire a change such that their offspring would have necks better suited to their needs. Darwin applied natural selection to the same example mainly because it had already been discussed in such detail.

Pro: new niches become available; species will have the ability to diversify and occupying those niches.

Con: you have to kill off some species for those niches to become available.
Con: in terms of biosphere stability, it's always better to have more diversity than less.
Con: in terms of gene survival, it's always better to have more diversity than less.

I'm not sure there are any pros worth the cons of this...

Cuvier was a proponent of catastrophism. Not so much a theory of evolution as an " explanation " of where all the fossil evidence that was being found then came from. Curvier posited that a series of catastrophes to the whole earth happened and every time they happened god repopulated the world with newer type organisms. Totally baseless and refuted by the evidence.

A starfish fits into the cladogram because invertebrates are being with exoskeletons or no skeletons at all it fits into the invertebrate part of the cladogram

The use and disuse theory was proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a French naturalist, in the early 19th century. Lamarck suggested that organisms could pass on traits acquired during their lifetime to their offspring. This theory contrasted with Darwin's theory of natural selection and is now largely discredited.