Unit 9 Reflection: "What on Earth Evolved?"

Hi all! This unit is one of the last few reflections closing out our excellent year in biology. :/

It is sad, but I am sure the last few weeks will not be any less excellent, if not better. In fact, one of the best units we have done is the one we have just done. It ties in what we have learned from the microscopic level of things as we have learned before with the new ecology studies that we have just recently covered. This unit, based on "What on Earth Evolved", revolves around that; the title is pretty self explanatory. In more depth, we went over the evolution of species, from the very beginning of time, as you can see from below.

The universal tree of evolution

This diagram was the essential understanding to our unit. It goes over the fact that evolution was essentially a long list of common ancestors, each branching off one at a time to form the vast diversity we have today, where all the intricate "branches" of the great evolutionary tree are.

Classmates constructing the geologic timeline of Earth

On top of this, we did create a geologic timeline, where it was proportional to the length of the Earth's lifespan. It really surprised me, when I realized we were really a fraction of a blink of an eye, compared to the billions of years of Earth's existence, and hundreds of millions of years of life's existence on Earth.

A pie shaped timeline of the Earth
This is similar to our timeline, except in a clock-like manner

The only few questions I have remaining are the ones involving life's origin. It has been hypothesized to an extent, that life was, over a long time, created in this primordial soup, but I am curious to find out more about this distant origin.

Here, as you can see (hopefully I corrected the permissions and stuff ;)), is my What on Earth Evolved presentation. I did mine on penicillium, because it seemed like a very mysterious, albeit useful antibacterial potent fungi. It has changed the very lifestyle of the last century, and antibiotics continue to be a controversial thing today