Darwin’s Dangerous Idea Name ______
Ramshaw – Biology Hour ______
1. The first scenes take place in the year ______and in which location? ______
2. Darwin understood that what he was proposing was a truly ______idea.
3. Darwin kept his ideas a secret because he knew if anyone found out it would ______his career and ______his reputation.
4. Was it easy for Darwin to give his speech which explained his findings? ______
5. When discussing birds (which ended up being Finches) Darwin proposed that perhaps the Finch had been blown to the Galapagos from South America and then began to change, ______if you will, become more and more different from their ancestors, generation to generation. First into varieties then into new species, each new species marooned on its own ______.
6. Darwin thought if the globe has undergone such profound changes in its history, geologically, surely all living creatures must have ______with it to adapt to their new conditions. Otherwise they would have perished.
7. This lead to a pattern of thinking… There must be a law which causes new species to ______in place of the extinct ones.
8. Darwin’s idea of the “Tree of Life” began to appear… the trunk represented the ______ancestor. Some branches die out and some continue on.
9. In Ecuador, scientists have been studying the rainforest. By comparing the 2 groups of animals (living at 2 different elevations) they hope to better understand how changing environments might ______the evolution of new species.
10. Given enough time and enumerable small events, anything can take place by the laws of ______.
11. In the high grasslands, hummingbirds have adapted to the very cold nights by being able to drop their body temperatures ______degrees and go into a state of ______.
12. Once organisms can no longer reproduce with on another, they are considered separate ______on the tree of life.
13. Did Darwin know about DNA? _____
14. By comparing DNA we can determine who is most closely related to whom, when they had a ______ancestor, and when they diverged from the common ancestor.
15. When Darwin picks up a book by Malthus, he realizes that Malthus’ idea of a struggle – it relates to nature as well. Nature selects them (the organisms better suited to their environment) to pass on their traits to ______generations.
16. Darwin realized that in nature individual organisms compete for limited resources, those with some kind of ______… are more likely to survive and reproduce and pass on those advantages to their ______. Those who are less fit will not succeed.
17. Darwin called this ______selection.
18. We can see natural selection and evolution happening now with _____, it keeps adapting and changing. It now has drug resistant strains.
19. How fast can this virus evolve? ______
20. Darwin didn’t want to publish his book, but his brother made him go to what city? ______
21. When Darwin was talking to another scientist who was studying a chimp, they were comparing the bone structures of different animals. Darwin said, “The similarity of structure indicates one thing and one thing only, an ______common ancestor – real flesh and blood parents.”
22. The human eye has become an area of focus for those who are skeptical of Darwin’s ideas. Skeptics say only a creator can make the eye because it is so ______.
23. What are 2 imperfections of the eye? ______
24. Darwin believed that what he called an “organ of extreme complexity like the eye, could evolve by ______steps – given enough time.
25. Any trait that improved vision would aid in the search for ______, or a mate, or in the avoidance of predators, so natural selection would most certainly favor those traits.
26. When talking about the earliest most primitive eye, this kind of eye can be found in nature today in the ______. Their eyes evolved no further because that is all they needed.
27. A little more complex eye involved making the eye ______or to make the opening smaller. This is shown by the organism: Chambered ______
28. The next step in making a complex eye is to form a ______which humans have. This was a solution to the dimming that occurs from constriction.
29. Darwin worried so much that he ended up giving himself a stomach ______.
30. Which member of Darwin’s family died? ______Of what? ______
31. Darwin actually married his first ______.
32. How did this loss affect his faith? ______
33. Darwin certainly didn’t think that evolution spoke for or against the improvable existence of God or a form of God. He didn’t desire to cast disparagement on anyone’s religious convictions. He regarded it as a ______matter which he was never able to hold with conventional zeal following the ______of his life.
34. When interviewing Dr. Miller about believing in God and evolution, a statement was made that “For Miller and millions of followers of all major religions, notions of God and evolution are fully ______.”
35. Darwin was shocked when he was reading Alfred ______’s paper that came to the same conclusions as he had already come to. He knew he had to publish his book very soon.
36. One night, Darwin had a nightmare about being ______.
37. When he was writing his book and reflecting about his early studies, Darwin said, “When aboard the HMS Beagle as Naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South America… and in the ______relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seem to throw some light on the ______of species.”
38. Did Darwin include the origin of man in his book? ______
39. When his book came up for review in front of other scientists, it was mocked for the common ancestor idea because it was seen as incompatible with the word of ______.
40. In the 19th century in Darwin’s time it was audacious to clam that humans and ______were closely related. There wasn’t that much scientific evidence.
41. Since that time, the evidence has become ______.
42. The evidence includes the ______record and DNA analysis.
43. DNA sequences between humans and chimps are ______% identical. There are only a few “spelling differences”.
44. When discussing the evolution of the human/chimp brain similarities, researchers learned that chimps play like humans (children) and can even learn how to ______.
45. We have seen their ability to grasp extremely complex notions like the concept of ______for example.
46. There’s no way the chimps could be able to do this if they didn’t have a great deal of commonality in literally the neurological structure that supports their ability to ______- just like we do.
47. Those things are absolutely comparable and had to have come from a ______.
48. What clearly happened is that natural selection favored the evolution of organisms that could communicate, that could manipulate symbols, and could construct ______.
49. When did Darwin die? ______At what age? ______
50. Specifically, where was he buried? ______
51. How is this ironic? ______
52. At the end of his book, Darwin writes“…So simple a beginning, endless forms, most beautiful, and most wonderful, have been and are being ______”.