As science teachers using NGSS, we don't just teach facts. We use storylines to connect facts into a larger picture. A fun way to get students interested in evolution can be to use clips from fun science fiction movies.

Many kids have seen the Tremors series of movies, featuring the fictional animal, Graboids. While fictional, we can ask - if they were real, how could they have evolved? With careful observation and Socratic questioning we inspire students to posit what form of life they could have evolved from - in doing so we cover natural selection, convergent evolution, and clades and phylogenies!

https://kaiserscience.wordpress.com/2018/06/29/graboids/

#evolution #NGSS #storylines #biology #graboids #tremors #clades #phylogenies
#biologyteachers #scienceteachers #highschoolscience

This unit addresses critical thinking skills in the Next Generation Science Standards, based on “A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas” by the National Research Council of the National Academies

Just in time for
#FossilFriday: Fossil constraints on the origin and evolution of #Platyhelminthes are surprisingly concordant with modern molecular #phylogenies:

https://doi.org/10.1590/S1984-4689.v41.e24002

#flatworms

#paleobiology

#paleontology

#fossils

#paleoparasitology

#helminths

#flatworms

New database of animal silhouettes just dropped. Tag yourself.

I'm "skateboarding ape": https://www.phylopic.org/images/4ddb3d08-d0d9-421d-9bb2-3adbd0bfe28d/nakalipithecus-nakayamai
#Phylogenies #Visualization #Biology #Humor

"Time-calibrated molecular #phylogenies have suggested that this genus originated in the #Caribbean in the Early #Oligocene and then colonized Central America in the Middle #Miocene. Here, we describe the first records of pre-Quaternary fossils referred to #Eleutherodactylus from Florida."

https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlad130/7324795?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Introductory video on how to read #phylogenies with 5 practice exercises at the end.

Some wording could be improved, but I wanted to get this out!

Should be a good subject for those new to #évolution or want a refresher for how to read phylogenetic trees!

https://youtu.be/_KrSEVgqmdw

#scicomm

I asked chatGPT to tell me a joke about #phylogenies:

Why did the phylogenetic tree fall over?

Because it didn't have proper root support!