Standard 8g Preknowledge
8g) ***Students know how several independent molecular clocks, calibrated against each other and combined with evidence from the fossil record, can help to estimate how long ago various groups of organisms diverged evolutionarily from one other.
CALIFORNIA FRAMEWORKS SUMMARY:
Molecular clocks are another tool to establish phylogenetic sequences and the relative dates of phylogenetic branching. Homologous proteins, such as cytochrome c, of different taxa (plants and animals classified according to their presumed natural relationships) and the genes that produce those proteins are assumed to evolve at relatively constant rates. On the basis of that assumption, the number of amino acid or nucleotide substitutions provides a record of change proportional to the time between evolutionary branches. The estimates of rate of change derived from these molecular clocks generally agree with parallel data from the fossil record; however, the branching orders and times between branches are more reliably determined by measuring the degree of molecular change than by comparing qualitative features of morphology. When gaps in the fossil record exist, phylogenetic branching dates can be estimated by calibrating molecular change against the timeline determined from the fossil record.