Biology 343 Lecture

General Course Information

Reading Materials

Text	Functional Anatomy of the Vertebrates	Liem et al.	on Reserve
Laboratory Manual	Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy	Zalisko and Kardong	required

Lecture Themes

Evolutionary pattern of the Chordates. I will be describing in detail, the cladogram appearing on page 51 of the text. Memorize this and you'll be on your way to understanding Chordate evolution. This is by no means all you'll need, it is the first overview. Don't do it all at once! This new text provides the most up to date version of vertebrate evolution.

Characteristics of Chordate groups. We will go into more detail with some groups than others. Clearly, more information will be available for extant groups; extinct groups known from the fossil record are less well-known, since typically only hard parts are fossilised. However, by comparing the anatomies of extant forms with extinct ones, we can understand more of the lifestyles of those extinct forms.

Functions of Chordate specialisations. We will take a system by system approach to look at Chordate adaptations more closely. For example, we will not only look at how teeth evolved, but we will see the diversity of teeth (and lack of teeth) in the chordate lineages.

Blood flow in crocodilian hearts: A PowerPoint guide is here.

Links to Pertinent Websites

Fossils of non-craniate chordates