Presentation "Evolution"

This site will give you a short overview about the presentation. Next to an introduction, the history of the theory of evolution, the evolution of vertebrates, the origin of the first living cells, and the evolution of the cells of our bodies are discussed.

The presentation is based on HTML and JavaScript. It has been tested using "Netscape Communicator Version 4.7", "Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 5" and "Mozilla 1.6" under the windows operating system. Because this internet-site has been programmed in a very similar style as the CD-presentation, a good performance of these pages implies a similar performance of the CD.

The presentation can be obtained upon request for 20 Euro (inclusive 19 % value added tax and transfer expenses within Germany).

Introduction: With this talk you obtain a general introduction into the most important issues of evolution and of the early history of life on earth. The Html-files are to be used as accompanying material to the respective figures and animations from the directory "presentation". These figures and animations should be presented in alphabetical order. They are produced for a screen size of 800 x 600 Pixel.

Introduction

History of the theory of evolution: Charles Darwin published his theory about evolution in 1859, less than 150 years ago. Until this time most people took nature to be organized as an invariable scale culminating in god himself.

History

Evolution of vertebrates: The major groups of vertebrates evolved during the last 500 million years starting with the group of fish. The development was interrupted by several large catastrophes.

Vertebrates

The first cells: According to fossil findings, the first living cells evolved very early after the formation of earth. The figure depicts the evolution of cyanobacteria and the concomitant formation of oxygen on our planet. Compared with the time periods depicted here, the evolution of vertebrates (indicated in the upper part of the figure) occurred pretty fast.

Origin

Symbioses form the basis of our body cells: Our body cells – as well as the cells of all macroscopically visible organisms – evolved by the symbiotic fusion of organisms, which had developed separately for a long time. The figure shows a liver cell in front of the evolutionary lines leading to such cells.

Symbioses