Science+Cafe-+Improbable+Destinies

On December 14th, I attended the improbable destinies event held at the Science Cafe. I listened to a lecture given by evolutionary biologist and Harvard professor Jonathan Losos about the nature and possibilities of evolution. He talked about convergent and divergent evolution, and related these concepts to ways the world may be different today if evolution had, from a stroke of luck, taken a different turn. He introduced concepts of evolution to us with films such as The Good Dinosaur, where he explored the ways in which just one change, such as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs missing the Earth, could affect the process of evolution and life on earth. Through the film Jurassic World he discussed ways in which modern dinosaur-like people could have evolved and how that evolutionary path was in ways similar or different to the path humans took.

This lecture relates to concepts we covered in AP Environmental Science because we were able to discuss and learn about the mechanics of convergent and divergent evolution, which are two evolution types we learned in class. We talked about how these two types of evolution are affected by the surrounding environment and how life on earth is shaped and protected by evolution itself, which is one of the key concepts of APES.