First Life Part 1 -Arrival
1. How can the history of life be thought of?
2. How many kingdoms of life are there? ________________ What are the names of the kingdoms?
3. What was found in the woods near where the narrator grew up?
4. How long have humans been around? _____________________________________________
5. How long ago were dinosaurs wiped out? _________________________________________
6. How long ago did Charnia live? ____________________________________________________
7. What were living things like before Charnia and other multicellular life evolved?
8. When did single-celled life first appear on Earth? ________________________________
9. How was the early Earth different from Earth today?
10. For how long were simple single-celled organisms the most advanced form of life on
Earth?_________________________________________________________________________
11. How are the ages of rocks determined?____________________________________________
12. What might have been the “spark that ignited” the evolution of animals?
13. What was this event called?_________________________________________________________
14. How long did it last?_________________________________________________________________
15. What helped end “snowball earth?
16. What atmospheric gas do cyanobacteria and other photosynthetic bacteria
produce?______________________________________________________________________________
17. ____________________________________________ was key to the rise of the animal kingdom.
18. What kind of simple multi-cellular organism does the narrator call a “living fossil”
_________________________________________________________________________________
19. How are the cells of sponges held together in a clump?
20. What are three advantages of being multi-cellular?
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
21. Describe the oldest known large multi-cellular creatures (“proto-animals”) in terms of their ability to
move and their color.
22. How many genetic commands are necessary to put together “proto-animals”?
23. What allowed the proto-animals to absorb nutrients directly without mouths or guts?
24. How long ago did mobile creatures (creatures able to move) first develop?___
25. What evidence do paleontologists have that these ancient creatures were able to move?
26. What two advantages did mobile creatures have over the proto-animals that could not move?
_____________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
27. What is the modern animal body plan called?
28. What does “bilateral symmetry” mean?
29. Why are our noses near our mouths? _
30. Why are out eyes near our mouths?
31. What does a species have to do to survive?
32. How did the first organisms reproduce?
33. What advantages does sexual reproduction give to a species?
34. What do corals do once a year?
35. Why might complex animals have evolved so quickly?
36. Mobile animals need more ______________________________________ than sedentary animals (animals that do
not move).
If there are predators in the environment, what do you think will happen to the other species living
around those predators? What are some traits that would help the other species survive?