Darwin-in-the-Garden
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The Big Bang was not an explosion of matter and energy. It was an expansion of the space containing matter and energy. We would not be here were it not for the rapid expansion that thinned and cooled the insanely dense, hot, formless universe. Thanks to dark matter, structure formed first, making it possible for massive stars to form and live and die young, enriching interstellar space for future generations of stars that synthesized the building blocks of galaxies, stars, planets, life over billions of years.
Relationships in the garden have roots in cosmogenesis, cooperation, competition, and coevolution of plants with the geophysical environment and other kingdoms of life. Autotrophs evolved before heterotrophs because the molecular and metabolic building blocks of photosynthesis took time to evolve. For high energy organisms, respiration provided evolutionary advantages over fermentation. Oxidation and oxygenation altered the evolutionary history of the planet. Microbes evolved before complex multicellular life. Bacteria evolved before algae and plants. Seed plants evolved before flowering plants coevolved with animals. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
Darwin in the Garden Poster Display for Feb 12 2009 Darwin bicentennial |
Darwin in the Garden © Bob Field 2009-0204
Posters and Talk based on walk: Exploring Evolution in the Leaning Pine Arboretum
Theme: Darwin traveled the world before he understood the origin of species, but all we have to do is visit Mediterranean gardens to illustrate how the Earth and its biosphere have been evolving for billions of years. It’s all about relationships with other plants, animals, algae, bacteria, and fungi, and the Earth and its geobiosphere. |
Our walk and poster display are based on four big ideas: