Students work in teams, classify furniture, share categories/rationales, and note how their different schemes are logical and useful, but vary and are completely arbitrary. They then see how living organisms are classified and note how these natural groupings reflect the same ancestral relationships in the same nested hierarchies. The concept is exemplified using primate phylogenetic trees.

Students observe that the banding patterns seen on stained chromosomes from humans and chimpanzees show striking similarities. Possible evolutionary relationships are explored, as are the chromosomes and relationships of other apes.

Students describe, measure and compare cranial casts from contemporary apes, modern humans, and fossil hominids to discover some of the similarities and differences between these forms and to see the pattern leading to modern humans.

Students formulate explanations and models that simulate structural and biochemical data as they investigate the misconception that humans evolved from apes.

Students plot the distribution of major hominid taxa on a world map to hypothesize about the origin and movement of prehuman ancestors.