Introduction

• What sort of places do you have to go on earth to find living things?
• What does this imply about life?
• What is CHON?  What does it have to do with life?
  

• What is the "pre-biotic soup":
• What simple compounds were present in the atmosphere that were used in the synthesis of the pre-biotic soup?
• What sources of energy were present on the early earth that would generate the pre-biotic soup?
• What more complex molecules were generated?
• How does NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) define "life"? 
  

• Three facets of Darwinian Evolution are amplification, mutation and selection.  What are they?  Why are they required for evolution?  
• Amplification
• Mutation
• Selection
  
• Why is evolution required for life?

• What is the age of the oldest fossils found on earth?
• What continents are they found on?
  
• How long did it take life to evolve out of the pre-biotic soup?
• What kind of molecule that is thought to have begun life (present between the pre-biotic soup and the DNA-protein life that characterizes all life on earth today)?

• Why should life adapt/change/evolve?
• When a species fails to adapt, what tends to happen to it?
• What is a mass extinction?
• What was the prediction made by Darwin in 1859 that required 100 years before it was proven true?  What happened in the 1960's that allowed us to show he was correct?
• What new evidence do we have to infer that tiny bacteria-shaped fossils were life forms?
• Could a new type of life come into existence on earth? Why?