Rise of the Mammals
Discuss the following:
diversity of habitats and lifestyles
convergent evolution
placental vs. marsupials

The rise of the angiosperms and the connection to the insects.
What were early mammals like? Where did they live, what did they eat?
How did the Cretaceous end? Fossil evidence and various hypotheses (impact,volcanic, and regression).

Compare changes in the marine environment to the changes on the land following the Permian extinction.
What species went extinct and which species expanded and underwent adaptive radiation?
Are dinosaurs "warm blooded" or "cold blooded"? Evidence.
Discuss the modern fauna characterization.

What happened following the end of the Permian?
Life in the Mesozoic
The Mesozoic Marine Revolution
Marine Vertebrates

Describe what happened to marine and terrestrial life at the end of the Permian.
What are some of the possible explanations for the mass extinctions?
How did life on the sea and on the land change? What species went extinct? Why?

Discuss organisms present in the Permian era.
How are the organisms adapting to the new terrestrial environments?
The evolutionary innovation of the amniotic egg and what it meant to the survival of the synapsids.
Compare the development of the seed to the development of the amniotic egg.
Discuss the divergence of the amniotes.
What was the food pyramid like during this time?

What is Glossopteris flora?
What is unusual about the distribution of this flora?
How does continental drift play into the explanation?
What about the animal fossils in these same areas?
How does dispersal in plants differ from dispersal in animals?
How did the climate change as Gondwanaland broke up?

What is the origin of the name Carboniferous?
Why do we use Pennsylvanian and Missippian in the US?
What is a coal swamp?
How is coal formed?
What organisms both flora and fauna present during this time?
What was the climate like?
How do we know?
What does cold blooded vs. warm blooded mean?
Why were the floras and faunas of North Africa, America, and Europe virtually identical during this time period?

Discuss reef formation in Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods.
What species were present in each geologic period?
How does ecological succession help reconstruct fossil reefs?

Examine the evolution of plants as they moved from the sea to the land.
Why move out of the sea?
What are the "new" habitat requirements?
Examine morphological changes in the bryophytes, lycophytes, pteridophytes and early gymnosperms.
Why was the seed an important evolutionary advancement?