GREAT TRANSFORMATIONS SUMMARY

This is a 57- minute film that contains six chapters and focuses on the “great transformations” of evolution as the title suggests. Among them is the advancement of a standard four-limbed body arrangement, the journey from water to dry land, the arrival of warm-blooded marine creatures to the ocean, and the development of human beings. Driven by a mix of opportunism and a hereditary “toolbox,” these bewildering jumps characterize the arc of evolution. Furthermore, they propose that each living animal on earth today, and each species that has ever existed, is a minor departure from one complex hereditary line—an individual from one tree of life.

The initial segment of the video focused on whales and their precursors. Whales and dolphins starting points are a mystery. They are a couple of creatures that have extensive and advanced brains. Phil Gingerich, a geologist from Michigan University, went to Pakistan and found the back of a skull that looked like a wolf skull, but something wasn’t right. There was a walnut estimated knock inside the skull. Part of the inward ear had a distinctive shape. Just found in whales. This shaped the inquiry, “did whales originate from area warm-blooded animals?” He expected to discover more fossils to demonstrate every phase of whale change or their transitional structures. He then made a trip to a spot where discovering whales skeletons appeared to be very improbable: The Sahara Desert. The driest spot on Earth however 40 million years back, it was the southern part of the Mediterranean Sea. There is a 100-mile stretch of sandstone called the Valley of the Whales, loaded with rose-shaded stones. In any case, these aren’t stones; they’re 40-million-year old whale skeletons. Gingerich believes that it once was a secure Cove, a tidal pond hidden from the untamed ocean by a sand bar; but did they sire young ones there? Or did they actually die there?

All the fossils identified with the Basilosaurus, a definitely known whale, but he took them back to his lab to study them again. Gingerich then acknowledged something astonishing: Basilosaurus had legs, a pelvis, kneecaps, and even toes. Whales had once been four-limbed creatures. Their predecessor being a 50-million-year old wolf-like creature. It was a predator and scrounger that lived along the seashore. It likely found the ocean rich with nourishment and an asylum from a rivalry. After many years, its front legs could have transformed into blades; the back legs may have vanished, lost its hide, and framed a streamline shape.

Whales and dolphins swim the same route as otters: undulating their spine, much like how well evolved creatures run. Neil Shubin says evolution didn’t expect anything new; it was simply tinkering with warm blooded creatures as it does with each group in history. Before 100 million years back, there were no creatures on land, everything lived in the water, there needed to have been movement from water to land, fish onto land. (They demonstrated a clip of the strolling fish)

The video then discussed how the old thought was that fish went onto land, later developing appendages. The new thought is that tetrapods developed fingers first then left the water. Jenny Clack, from Cambridge University, went to Greenland and brought back a huge amount of rock in the wake of drilling for a long time. She found the most complete tetrapod skeleton to date; a water inhabitant with a fish-like tail, gills, and arms ending with petal-like hands. This demonstrated some water animals had arms and legs before going onto land.

After discussing stream animals and their survival skills, the video examined the Cambrian Explosion, in which 570 million years back, creatures showed up in short blasts.

In 1913, in the Canadian Rockies, scientist Charles Walkid found 60,000 fossils got in a submerged mudslide, or shale, which he named the Burgess Shale. (There were trilobites) Some Burgess Shale animals had five eyes, and a long retractable spout, sharp spines jutting from their backs, prongs around their mouths and some more.

Finally, in the wake of demonstrating the Pikaia and its vertebrae, the video talks about the hereditary cosmetics of creatures (RNA and DNA). For instance, the fruit fly and mutation, how toxic substance and radiation made the flies to transform.

The documentary was received well though there were still some negative comments concerning it. this is because the documentary left some questions unanswered and some facts defied. The views claimed to have watched a lot of fossil records but the film does not show the ancestry of the fossils. The film leaves the viewer to think that he fossils shows might have been ancestry to others or might not. One issue that seemed to raise questions in the film was the rate at which viruses and bacteria mutated and grew. We well know that a TB virus in the US resembles the TB virus anywhere in the world. There is no way the TB virus can change to become a HIV virus, but in the film, we are shown bacteria and viruses that change from one species to new ones with time. I personally think that the film is misleading where we are told that there are people who existed millions of years ago. But according to history, the first human being as we are today started appearing some fifty thousand years ago.