Okay, two advance in technology that are mentioned most in the field of Biology are Biochemistry and Microbiology. Obviously these technologies are previously not abailable due the lack of scientific equipements that will allow these to happen and the lack of knowledge on the behaviour of organic substances. However, recently the development in these areas have allowed the development in Biochemistry and Microbiology and therefore help biologists to understand more about evolution by comparatively finding differences and similarities between organisms.
For examples, DNA analysis is a branch of Biochemistry whcih study the structure and genetic information that is carried by DNA. The most obvious case will be your chimpanzee and human, when the DNAs of these organisms are compared, more than 99% similarities are found between these organisms. This gives strong evidence that chimpanzee are very closely related and it is very likely that they have recently diverged from a common ansector.
Although, when two organisms may look very similar in structure, they can have a very different ansectral history. For instance, we have the Aussie sugar glider here, which looks very similar to the American flying squirrel - my friend just told me that he thought they are just two different names for one organism. When biologist analyse the genetic information of both organisms, they have discovered that the sugar glider and flying squirrel are NOT closely related - and this is what we called convergent evolution.
In the second case, if Biochemistry is not available, structural and phenotypical evidence will only suggest that they have diverged from a common ansector. (This is how you score the point for "...have changed scientific thinking about evolutionary relationships ")
Just a note on this.. I don't know if you have previously read a message about a syllabus note team before, but what we are aiming to do is to produce syllabus notes for a variety of subjects (currently: Biology, Chemistry, English - it's just general techniques, and probably no notes related to the syllabus will be published, Maths - except for general, Physcis... Prospective subjects include: Business Studies, Legal Studies, Ancient/Mordern History, General Maths...) So if you are interested in joining us, please visit the link in my signature.. quote from Frigid: most people are "selfish selfish beings"... let's not be one of those will ya? Thank you!
