The Piltdown Hoax

1. The Piltdown man is an infamous hoax that is believed to have been conceived by Charles Dawson. Charles Dawson was an amateur at the time of the discovery in a small English town of Piltdown.  Dawson made discoveries of skull fragments in a gravel pit in Piltdown. The overall response from other scientists was that the the Piltdown man skull was a forgery and that it included bone fragments of a human cranium and an ape's jaw.

2. Dawson's ambition and greed paved way for this forgery to happen.  He made up a new species from existing  species' fossils and made it his own.  Same can be said of the scientist, Dr. Arhur Keith, who wanted to support his own idea of the evolution of the human. He saw Piltdown man as a way to confirm his own ideologies and was set on doing everything he could to confirm it.  This would greatly skew the scientific process as evidenced by the many different results from testing the same bone fragments that was down by scientists.

3. Positive aspects that can be taken from the scientific process was the other scientists willing to retest the samples and see if they could come up with the same results as Dawson. Scientists were able to date the fossils with a method measuring the fluorine content in the fossils.  The fossils proved to be roughly only a hundred years old and that number easily put to rest of an ancient human ancestor thought to be a million years old. They were also able to use a microscope and find grooves in the teeth that would suggest the teeth were filed down to a desired wear pattern of a human from an orangutan jaw and teeth fossil. The fossils were stained and manipulated to removed obvious signs of the origins of the fossils.

4. As long as humans are using the scientific process, I would imagine it being extremely difficult to remove the human element from it.  Every scientist has a subliminal bias and way to view the evidence in a way most beneficial to them.  I wouldn't want to remove the human factor from science because then science wouldn't be there.  Most discoveries are done by accident and are usually done in a fashion similar to see if they can disprove or support a theory with new tests.  Humans will be needed to study science to help create a better understanding of how things work.

5.  You learn that you must do your own testing to and research to reassure the facts.  Taking the word of somebody online that tells a story one way is often not told in a truthful manner. You hear all the time about journalists taking comments out of context and twisting the words into a way of a negative connotation.  Celebrities are constantly subject to this practice and us as the readers have no way to know the actual context of the interview.  Until the person confirms or denies that is how they said  and meant something, as a reader we are subject to just know what's been said.

Primate Order: Dentition Patterns

Lemurs

1. Lemurs are native to the island of Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa.  Madagascar is very hot, humid and known to have cyclone seasons due to the winds that come in from the east. 
2. The dentition pattern of the lemur is that of a six-tooth teethcomb with 2 canine like premolars towards the back.
3. The toothcomb allows for the lemurs to groom each other and is also used for shearing leaves and eating into the bark of trees to get into the sap portion of the trees in the region it lives.
4. 

Spider Monkey

1. Spider Monkeys are prevalent in the Southern Mexico to South American rainforests.  The rain forests bear lots of fruit, the main food source for the Spider monkey.
2. The teeth of a spider monkey jut out from its mouth.
3. The way the teeth go outward in a slant helps the spider monkey in devouring fruits from the rain forest in which it lives. 
4. 

Baboon

1. Baboons are found in African and Arabian savannahs and woodlands.  They are able to adapt to any land as long as there is a water source and a safe place to sleep such as a tall tree or a cliff side.
2. Baboons are known for their very long canine teeth. This is due to the fact that baboons actually have a fair amount of meat in their diet ranging from fish, to even small antelopes.
3. The longer teeth allow the baboon to bite into and kill smaller animals to eat meat.  This helps in the savannahs where there isn't as much vegetation to sustain a proper diet for the baboons.  Although a baboon's primary source of food is vegetation, it also eats more meat than most primates do.
4. 

Gibbon

1. Gibbons are native to the northeastern rain forests of India into Indonesia and Southern China.
2. Gibbons have small jaws with long canine teeth, similar to the baboon.
3. Gibbons have the long teeth in helping them with the small portion of meat they do eat in their diet.  They prefer however to eat lots of fruit, especially fruits high in sugar such as figs.  The smaller jaw helps with the biting into the fruit.
4. 

Chimpanzee

1. Chimpanzees are found in the forests of west and central Africa.
2. Chimpanzees have the same outward jutting jaw as the Spider Monkey that helps in the fruit eating diet.  They also have the longer canine teeth but are not known to be meat eaters.They also have a thinner enamel than other primates to help them form sharper teeth they need to tear through leaves and fruit that they eat.
3. The jaw is the most relevant of the teeth of the chimp as it offers the best reason for eating fruit. The thinner enamel was slo interesting in knowing it allows for sharper teeth to help tear through the leaves of their secondary food source. 
4. 

Having looked at the dentition patterns of all the primates covered, it was interesting to see the slight changes the primates have gone through.  The fruit eaters have the jaw that juts out that allows for bigger bites of the fruit. The long canine teeth of the baboon and gibbon that help with their carnivorous habits, and the teethcomb of the lemur that allows them to effectively groom each other and allows for them to bite into the trees for the tree sap they also like to eat.  The overall structure of the dentition patterns of the primates are all very similar with very acute differences that benefit the species in its own unique way. It would seem since forests are the main place of habitat for primates, that environment didn't heavily figure in their adapted teeth.  Many of the functions of the teeth were to eat fruit from the forests with the exception of the baboon which had much longer canine teeth to help in its eating of meat.

Homologous, Analogous

The Tail

Humans vs. Dogs

Humans belong to the kingdom of Animalia according to taxonomy.  Dogs also are a species of the same kingdom.  Humans are bipedal with imposable thumbs as opposed to their best friend the dog, who walk on all fours and have a tail.

Humans also have a tail.  It is a vestigial structure known as the tail bone, or the coccyx.  It is believed that humans possess the tail bone as a result of an ancient ancestor that once possessed a tail, just as a dog has today.  Dogs today use their tails, or caudal vertebrae, today as a means of balance while humans have no beneficiary use of their tail bone.

Scientists believe that all mammals at one point used to be sea animals and eventually grew limbs to be able to walk on land.



The human eye vs the eye of an octopus

Humans are bipedal mammals that live on land.  The octopus is an eight legged sea creature that lives in deep ocean depths

Although humans and octopus are very different species, they share a common trait amongst each other.  Both the human and the octopus have eyes that they use for their sense of sight. Eyes serve as a the primary structure of interpreting what an organism can see.

I believe that both of the organisms did share an ancient organism with the shared trait.  It's hard to imagine an organism that didn't have the trait of being able to see.  The probability of an organism who can see versus another organism that can't see is astronomical except for some very extreme cases.

Protein Synthesis Assignment

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