This popular course has the benefit of an excellent textbook, The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution by science writer Carl Zimmer. In our fast-paced tour of all things evolution we cover a chapter for each of the 15 weeks of the semester and, despite the pace, I have heard several students comment that The Tangled Bank is the only textbook they have ever read from start to finish.
This class satisfies some upper-level writing requirements. With this in mind, a major goal of this class is for the students to learn how to write, in their own style, interesting and accurate explanations of the important concepts.
While not required for this course, a wonderful companion study guide for the textbook, written by University of Montana Forestry and Journalism faculty Alison Perkins is available.
BIOB 274 – Intro to Evolution – Syllabus
“Amazon Review” assignments:
- Eight Independent Lines of Evidence for Evolution (Chapter 1)
- Nothing in Biology Makes Sense… (Chapter 2)
- Dating Older Humans (Chapter 3)
- Rapid Evolution (Chapter 6)
- Ancient DNA and Human Evolution Video (Chapter 7)
- Biology from an Engineering Perspective (Chapter 8)
- Great Ape Father Figures (Chapter 9)
- Contemplating Future Artifical and Natural Human Evolution (to be assigned later in the semester)
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