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Juliana Ivanova
Professor Melissa Schafer
Anthropology 1020
8 December 2016
Evolution, the Reflection
Growing up, evolution was something I always believed in, but I didnt know why. I
would always hear about modern humans having evolved from primates, and I could understand
the resemblance that was made through different diagrams, yet I was never interested enough to
approach the topic by myself and become more educated. Going into anthropology, I had a
completely open mind, but what I didnt expect was how oriented the course was towards
humankind. Very soon I found out how natural selection, macroevolution, and microevolution
played a tremendous role for us to understand why we are here today.
Evolution by natural selection shows that over time, favorable variations increase in
frequency in a population. My favorite way to describe its underlying assumptions is to link it
with the rock pocket mouse video I watched in class. There is natural biological variation in fur
color, meaning mutations will randomly occur during sex cell division changing the offsprings
ability to survive. You inherit fur color from your parents and somewhere down the line there
was a mutation that allowed for dark mice to survive on the dark flows over the lighter mice
because they were more fit for this new environment. Competition allows for more mice to be
born than will survive and once you have dark fur, you are more likely to survive and produce
more offspring and favorable variations become more common among the populations.
Evolution comes in two forms and the first one is grouped into a smaller scale called
microevolution. There are five different microevolutionary forces of which four havent been

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talked about. The first force is mutation, a change in the genetic code. Sickle cell anemia is a
great example of a mutation in the blood creating Hemoglobin S (HbS). For someone to have
this mutation they would need to receive the gene from both parents. The second is gene flow, a
movement of genes between populations. This would mean part of a population would immigrate
into another population and incorporate its alleles into the other population. Third is genetic drift,
a change in allele frequency due to chance. Forth is non-random mating, which is selfexplanatory- not mating at random. Humans dont usually marry outside of their economic class.
Last is natural selection which was covered in the previous topic.
The second form of evolution is macroevolution, a large change over long periods of time
including six different forces. The first is speciation, an origin of new species. This process
involves reproductively isolated biological populations, although per the article What is a
Species? Georgina Mace from Imperial College of London argues the identification of species
doesnt give any indication of how reproductively isolated a species needs to be to qualify as a
species. The second is extinction, where a species ceases to exist, just like dinosaurs. The third is
convergence, where distantly related species is similar ecological niches develop a similar
appearance. The fourth is parallelism, where closely related species in similar ecological niches
maintain a similar appearance. The fifth is adaptive radiation, where the multiplication of species
exists. The final one is mosaic evolution, a pattern in evolution where the rate in evolution in one
functional system varies from other systems. For example, the dental and locomotor system both
evolved at different rates.
Now that the course is over, I have realized how much information is out there to show us
evolution exists! Scientists have tested it through DNA, primates, fossils, forensics, osteology,
paleoanthropology, etc. the list goes on. Like I previously stated, evolution was something I
always believed in, but I didnt have the specific evidence to back it up. I remember reading one

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of the first eReserve articles and thinking to myself, this is how the rest of society views
evolution. The article was called Darwins Rib and in it one of the students discusses the bible
stating God took a rib from Adam to create Eve and now all men should be missing a rib, but this
isnt a Lamarckian inheritance and every man should have just as many ribs as women.
I didnt have any assumptions to begin with because I wasnt educated enough to know
right from wrong when it came down to evolution. I learned about natural selection and survival
of the fittest in junior high and after that period the theory was never brought up again.
I liked the mammal or primate activity as well as the paleoanthropology activity. I loved
being able to get hands on experience and identify what something was from different
measurements around the skull.
Since I have a lot more knowledge as compared to the beginning of the semester, Ill be
more aware of the evolutionary forces. I was never aware of how many different things are
linked to evolution and now hopefully evolution has been to us today in evaluating our past.

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