Look for: Any claim is acceptable (e.g., Pedro is an an…

The questions on New Questions and Ideas for Data We Need are “Do you think Pedro could be an ancient ancestor of any of the modern penguins? Why or why not?” You will look for the following on the student handouts you collect at the end of this day:

Any claim is acceptable (e.g., Pedro is an ancestor, is not an ancestor, is related in some other way to modern penguins or other ancient penguins, and so forth).

Justification should include citing patterns in the heritable body structure data:

Pedro's entire set of known body structure variations doesn’t match any of the modern penguins.

If students say he is not related (or not an ancestor), they should discuss the amount of body structure variation that would need to match or be similar enough in order for them to be related. Ideally, students may also raise a potential problem with this logic, since it implies that you can only be related if you match on every or most heritable characteristic, but there are examples in humans or cattle (from the Muscles Unit) that they know about that refute that.

If they say he is related or might be related, they should discuss how that is possible given he has so few body structure variations in common with any modern penguins and include some kind of connection between the number of characteristics in common and relatedness (e.g., might be a distant ancestor because distant ancestors might be less like future generations than more-immediate ancestors).

If they don’t cite evidence based on the body structure variation data in the strips, then ask this general question on the handout: What particular patterns in the body structures that you compared led you to make this argument?