Prof.+Losos+Improbable+Destinies

====  At the Science Cafe lecture, Professor Losos discussed what would the world look like if an asteroid didn’t hit Earth and wipe out dinosaurs 65 million years ago. We then watched the Little Dinosaur trailer, which was based upon this possibility. He presented questions to us such as: would humans still have evolved in the same way millions of years later? One scientist, a paleontologist named Simon Conway Morris, believes that some very different species evolve similarly, or in convergent evolution. However, research shows that not every species has converged, and that non-convergence is as common as convergence. For example, Australian kangaroos are the equivalent of American deer in terms of niche, but they look completely different. The kiwi in New Zealand has not evolved an appearance parallel to anyone else. Lemurs and woodpeckers both make holes in trees and grab grubs for their source of energy, but lemurs do it with their fingers and woodpeckers with a long prickly tongue. They have evolved very different features and have not undergone convergent evolution.  This lecture was related to our APES class in that I learned about a different kind of evolution in which different organisms can evolve to have similar characteristics, or convergent evolution, which we also discussed in class. We also talked about species in general which we covered in our chapter on types of species and how they interact with themselves and their environment. (I am on the far left) ====