Title: Goals and Learning Objectives - chp 25
Course: BIO-182 RTZ > Section: Week 4- History of Life & the "Simple" Life

KEY CONCEPTS & LEARNING OBJECTIVES

- Goals:
  - Describe Earth’s geological history including fossils, continental drift, and its changing climate
  - Summarize the history of life on earth noting its origins, radiations, and major extinctions

- Learning Objectives:
  - Explain how stratigraphy enhances our understanding of evolutionary processes
  - Identify 5 period boundaries that are associated with major climatic or other events and state the consequences of these events.
  - Discuss the extent to which the current buildup of atmospheric CO_2 constitutes a major climatic events.
  - Describe the dynamics of oxygen over the past 4 billion years and how these dynamics relate to the life forms that dominated in different time periods.
  - Describe the consequences of continental drift, volcanoes, meteorites, and rapid climate change on living organisms.
  - Describe the contributions that fossil records have made to our understanding of evolution as well as the limitations of the fossil record.
  - Summarize the life forms present in the Precambrian era and the important developments that began therein.
  - Explain why the Cambrian period was so important to the presence of life as it currently exists on Earth.
  - Summarize the major evolutionary events of the Mesozoic era, including the impact of plate tectonics.
  - Distinguish the Cenozoic era from the preceding Cretaceous period, and explain its special relevance to humans.
  - Describe how the fossil record relates to phylogenetic trees.
  - Explain how geological and climatic events impact phylogenetic trees.

KEY TERMS: biota, Cambrian explosion, continental drift, eon, epoch, fauna, flora, geological time scale, Gondwana, half-life, igneous rock, Laurasia, Pangaea, plankton, plate tectonic, precambrian, radioisotope, radiometric dating, sedimentary rock, strata, stratigraphy