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Rated 4 out of 5 by Canadian from The Progression of Life on Earth My wife and I have studied more than 150 Great Courses together, and “Major Transitions in Evolution” is one of the best in terms of fascinating informational content. Two professors collaborated in its 24 sessions, and both Dr. Anthony Martin and Dr. John Hawks delivered memorable lectures. The narrative arc was engaging, with scientific terminology, key concepts of paleontology, and the chronology of dramatic fossil discoveries revealed gradually in an appropriate sequence. The effect was as compelling as a detective story. Further strengths of the course included: *Lectures were staged in a classroom setting, lending a scholarly tone. *While a teleprompter may have been used, that was not obvious, as the speakers sounded spontaneous. *Illustrative gestures by the speakers were helpful in making clear presumed structures and movements of ancient life forms. *Occasional wry humour was a plus. *The posing of questions followed by comparisons of potential answers, was an effective teaching technique, likely providing a glimpse into how researchers actually proceed. *Photos, sketches, video clips, and other illustrative materials were ample and generally very good. *The course guidebook included a timeline, glossary, bibliography, and life-cladogram (a branching diagram that charts how categories of living species are related). The professors who shared these lectures were impressive teachers. If I could grade them apart from the assessment of the course as a whole, each would rate 5-out-of-5 stars for excellence. They deserved better support, however, from ancillary components of the DVD product. Weaknesses included: *Videography, especially in the first two-thirds of the course, was not as skilful as usual in most of The Great Courses. Choices of viewing angles were somewhat odd, and too-frequent close-ups of a professor’s upper body often cut off helpful gestures and movements. *A recurring problem with charts and other visual accompaniments was that the printing on them was tiny and hard to decipher. *Though the guidebook included numerous extras, the same book’s lecture-by-lecture summaries were painfully brief. *Displays of the different shapes and positions of the planet’s continents over deep time were shown in Mercator projections, while Double Hemisphere maps would have been far more helpful. *The soundtrack of this course tended to stray away from perfect synchronization with speakers’ word formation, which was distracting. *During the filming/production process, when a professor’s excited speech occasionally became too rapid, some direction should have been given to slow him down. *Using the DVD format we had purchased, neither closed captioning nor subtitles were available. If we had had access to either type of captions, we would have used them when a lecturer was speaking too quickly. I learned belatedly that closed captioning was an option in the streamed version of this product. *Though the two professors usually did a good job of teaching sophisticated vocabulary, there was one lecture (#24) in which they “talked shop” with each other, using professional jargon that left the audience behind. Once again, this seemed to me to be a flaw in how course production had been handled. *A few mismatches of illustrations with spoken words were particularly unfortunate. One example occurred when a fossil find was described from the Tanzanian site of Laetoli, with a map of Ethiopia (more than 2000 km distant) popping up. When another statement was being made about fossil footprints, a handprint from a cave was instead displayed. None of my stated dissatisfactions are damning, but they mattered enough to drop my overall assessment of this course a notch. I do still recommend it, with a rating of 4 stars.

Date published: 2026-09-03

Rated 4 out of 5 by TTC enthusiast from Engrossing but also irritating First, presentation style. Dr. Martin speaks very rapidly and is obviously reading from a teleprompter. He comes across as tense, perhaps because he is not comfortable lecturing in a studio setting. Also, his wry jokes are not very funny, and his facial mannerisms (grimaces and eye-rolling) can be distracting. It took me a while to get past his presentation style. Dr. Hawks is more relaxed and much easier to follow. After becoming accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of Dr. Martin's delivery, I found the content of his lectures (1-17) very engaging, but also factually dense (I had to watch some lectures twice). Dr. Martin does a very good job of presenting the relevant fossil evidence and relating it to the geological timeline, although his visuals could have been more abundant. He also occasionally introduces terminology without explanation, for example "genetic drift" in lecture #1. Although he incorporates mass extinctions in his descriptive narrative, he does not address Stephen Jay Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibrium" in relation to the major extinction events. Dr. Hawks' first five lectures (18-22) are mainly a condensation of material he covers in greater detail in the TTC course titled "The Rise of Humans: Great Debates..." The final lecture in which the two professors appear together should have focused on issues in which their two approaches (/geological/paleontological and paleoanthropological) complement each other. Instead, they spent too much time stroking each other's egos. The course guidebook is a bit skimpy and, unfortunately, does not include the geological timeline used extensively by Dr. Martin in his lectures.

Date published: 2024-12-31

Rated 3 out of 5 by Nerd1234 from Lost opportunities The course covered a vast amount but was rushed and poorly presented. The timeline that appeared for a few seconds now and then was incomprehensible, and there was far too little use of images and too much talking to camera. The small amount of visual content was shown too briefly to make any sense of it, and instead of a coherent account of what the title promised, we got unexplained lists and arm-waving. The last instalment of mutual admiration added nothing and was a complete waste of time. This course could have been so much better.

Date published: 2024-06-30

Rated 4 out of 5 by smokeymkii from Solid, predictable, with flashes of brilliance I'm a fairly casual viewer, and my subjective view will be mediate through that lens; you have been warned, reader. I found both lecturers 'genial' as another reviewer aptly put it, and though both lacked a certain polish to their delivery (Martin's jokes suffered in the telling, and Hawks occasionally halting diction was a minor distraction), I enjoyed being in their company for the journey. The journey itself was interesting enough, but the material covered felt very familiar to me. This could be in part due to the lecture series' age (it's getting on a bit, now), and in part due to the fact I personally follow this topic in podcasts and on YouTube, so I'm not coming at the content terribly fresh. Neither is a criticism of the course, per se; it's simply an observation about my own capacity to enjoy that which is aimed a centimetre or two below my level of understanding. There were, however, a few places where I was riveted. In particular, the discussions that leant into ecology and paleobotany to paint a complex picture of how plants and their co-evolution with animal species changed the literal and figurative evolutionary landscapes of their times... they were great, as Martin and Hawks themselves observe in their wrap up lecture. That wrap up lecture was also an interesting and welcome touch; seeing the two professors react and sum up was an interesting and dynamic way to wrap up the course. But perhaps the highlight was the truly excellent 23rd episode, where Hawks really challenged and ploughed up my understanding of evolution by discussing how human evolution has accelerated in the past 40,000 years. All in all, while some segments went in one ear and out the other, overall, there was plenty to like here, as a casual viewer, and some real food for thought. Next, I think, a course on botany.

Date published: 2023-09-19

Rated 5 out of 5 by BD30 from Fantastic and Informative Course This has been one of the best courses I have taken. Excellent presentations, extremely knowledgeable professors and great discussions at the end. I did not have any ideas about so many transitions in history before. I knew about ape to human transitions but did not know about so many other important ones including 1) transitions from soft shell to hard, from marine to land, dinosaurs to birds, and so on..

Date published: 2023-06-25

Rated 5 out of 5 by Oldsir from Excellent course Five Stars, no question! It answered many questions that have been puzzling me for years. More important, it gave me lots of ideas to ponder. Great professors.

Date published: 2023-02-25

Rated 5 out of 5 by Forrest66 from You will have to watch more than once. I'm on my third time with this course. There is so much information to assimilate, once doesn't work for me.

Date published: 2023-01-29

Rated 5 out of 5 by KevMeist from Very interesting course Takes evolution from absolutely nothing to the current day and all the steps in between. Although there are many words that hard to pronounce in this course <g>, it is a fascinating story to hear.

Date published: 2022-06-27

Trailer

01: Macroevolution and Major Transitions

Professor Anthony Martin introduces the nearly 4-billion-year history of life by reviewing the basic concepts of macroevolution-the appearance of new forms of life from older forms of life. Learn how macroevolution leads to the major transitions covered in the course, such as the development of multicelled animals, flowering plants, and primates.

02: Paleontology and Geologic Time

Plunge into "deep time" by examining the two major types of evidence used in paleontology, which is the study of ancient life: namely, body fossils (shells, bones, molds, casts, eggs) and trace fossils (tracks, burrows, nests). Also, see how fossils are used together with radiometric dating to construct the geologic time scale.

03: Single-Celled Life—Prokaryotes to Eukaryotes

Complex life traces back to the Proterozoic eon, when simple one-celled organisms called prokaryotes evolved specialized structures and became new types of cells called eukaryotes. Investigate how this major transition took place, paving the way for the profusion of life forms explored in the rest of the course.

04: Metazoans—The Earliest Multicellular Animals

Make the leap from individual eukaryotic cells to organized groups of cells, called metazoans, which represent the first animals. Learn what distinguishes animals from plants, and how strange forms of animals flourished about 600 million years ago in shallow-marine environments devoid of predators.

05: The Development of Skeletons

Fossil beds such as the famous Burgess Shale in Canada show that life diversified quickly in the Cambrian period, about 500 million years ago. Discover that the reason relates to an "arms race" between predator and prey, which saw the development of skeletons and other mineralized parts.

06: The Rise of Vertebrates

Delve into a long-running paleontological mystery: conodonts survive only as tooth-like fossils, but paleontologists now know these were parts of eel-like creatures with primitive backbones. Such early vertebrates later diversified into fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals.

07: Colonization of the Land

Venture out of the water and onto land to learn how life adapted to terrestrial environments in the early part of the Paleozoic era, 500 to 400 million years ago. Algae, fungi, plants, and animals all had to evolve to survive and thrive in what were originally forbidding, barren landscapes.

08: Origins of Insects and of Powered Flight

Travel to the Devonian period, roughly 400 million years ago, and look at the early evolution of insects and insect flight. This major transition gave rise to what are today the most diverse and evolutionarily successful group of animals.

09: Seed Plants and the First Forests

Landscapes without large trees were typical before the early Carboniferous period, about 400 million years ago. Survey the fossil record for clues to the evolution of the first seed plants, called pteridosperms ("seed ferns"). These and other plants formed early forests, now preserved in much of the world's coal deposits.

10: From Fish to 4-Limbed Animals

The canopies provided by early forests gave vertebrates new opportunities to get out of the water and start moving around on land. Learn how all four-limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) owe their evolutionary origins to lobe-finned fish that started this transition about 380 million years ago.

11: The Egg Came First—Early Reptile Evolution

The chicken versus egg question has a thought-provoking answer from evolution. Explore the factors that led to the enclosed, amniotic egg, an adaptation that allowed primitive reptiles to spread into new environments on land, some 150 million years before reptiles branched into birds-and only much later into chickens.

12: The Origins and Successes of the Dinosaurs

Jump ahead to the Triassic period, about 250 to 200 million years ago, to investigate how small diapsid reptiles, whose living descendants include crocodiles and lizards, evolved into the most popular and iconic of all animals from the fossil record: the dinosaurs.

13: Marine and Flying Reptiles

Dinosaurs dominated the land from the Triassic to Cretaceous periods, about 230 to 65 million years ago, but evolution favored other reptiles to rule the seas and sky. Inspect these many "-saurs," including ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and pterosaurs.

14: Birds—The Dinosaurs among Us

"Dinosaur" has become a synonym for a failure to adapt to changing circumstances. But the dinosaur lineage survives today through birds. Starting with the remarkable transitional fossil Archaeopteryx, examine the evolutionary transition of theropod dinosaurs into graceful creatures of the air, which still retain some dinosaur-like characteristics.

15: The First Flowers and Pollinator Coevolution

Flowers are so widespread that it's hard to imagine a world without them. Return to just such a setting in the early Cretaceous period, and follow the selection pressures that led to primitive flowering plants, which developed in concert with the evolution of bees and other pollinating creatures.

16: Egg to Placenta—Early Mammal Evolution

Discover how mammals evolved from reptiles around 230 million years ago and later underwent an evolutionary leap from egg-laying to giving live birth. Surviving the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, they took off in an astounding burst of adaptive radiation.

17: From Land to Sea—The Evolution of Whales

Among the transitions that took place about 50 million years ago was the move of some land-dwelling mammals to marine environments, leading to modern whales. Considering that some whales became the most massive animals in the history of Earth, explore the question, "Why so big?"

18: Moving on Up—The First Primates

Professor John Hawks takes over from Professor Martin in the first of his six lectures on the evolutionary steps from early primates to modern humans. Learn how the first primates were uniquely adapted to navigate the complex canopies of ancient forests about 60 million years ago.

19: Apes—Swinging Down from the Trees

Trace the evolution of some primates into monkeys and apes, culminating in "the age of apes" beginning around 25 million years ago. Within their great diversity of size, diet, social structure, and ways of moving, one ape lineage appeared in Africa different from the others, sharing many features with modern humans.

20: From 4 Legs to 2—The Hominin Radiation

Examine fossil clues to the first major transition of human evolution: the development of upright walking. Being a biped has many advantages but also some major drawbacks. What body changes allowed early hominins like Australopithecus (including the famous Lucy) to walk efficiently on two legs?

21: First Humans—Toolmakers and Hunter-Gatherers

The first stone tools, 2.6 million years old, mark a change to a human-like social and cognitive system. Probe the nature of such early implements, and the hunting and gathering culture they represent-a way of life that placed many demands on human brains.

22: From Homo to sapiens—Talking and Thinking

Follow modern humans from their African homeland, about 100,000 years ago, as they dispersed into the ancient populations of Europe and Asia, challenging the territory of earlier humans. These rivals include the Neandertals, who are now much better understood through the decoding of their genome.

23: Our Accelerating Evolution

Human evolution did not stop with the advent of modern people. Consider how humans today are the descendants of incredible survivors, with a legacy of new genes that continue to affect diet, disease, physical appearance, and features such as skull and brain size, which has actually decreased in the past 10,000 years.

24: Reflections on Major Transitions

Conclude the course by experiencing a fascinating discussion between Professors Martin and Hawks as they compare perspectives, probe common themes in the major evolutionary transitions over the past

Overview Course No. 1518

Imagine a world without bees, butterflies, and flowering plants. That was Earth 125 million years ago. Turn back the clock 400 million years, and there were no trees. At 450 million years in the past, even the earliest insects had not yet developed. And looking back 500 million years, the land was devoid of life, which at that time flourished in a profusion of strange forms in the oceans. These and other major turning points are the amazing story of evolution. Given the broad scope of the subject, this course is taught by two professors: Anthony Martin, a paleontologist and geologist at Emory University, and John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Each is an outstanding teacher in his field, adept at making the subject interesting and accessible no matter what your background in science.

In 24 lavishly illustrated lectures, you will learn about Earth's major transitions, each of which brought forth new possibilities for life. You will study the conditions that led to the first complex cells, flying insects, flowering plants, mammals, modern humans, and many other breakthroughs. And in the process of studying the past, you will gain a powerful understanding of the present world.

About

Anthony Martin

To better overcome the challenges of confronting deep time when studying evolution, paleontology and geology are the most important sciences.

ALMA MATER

University of Georgia

INSTITUTION

University of Georgia

Dr. Anthony Martin is Professor of Practice in the Department of Environmental Studies at Emory University, where he has taught courses in geology, paleontology, environmental science, and evolutionary biology since 1990. He earned his B.S. in Geobiology from St. Joseph's College (Indiana), M.S. in Geology from Miami University (Ohio), and Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Georgia. At Emory, he has been recognized with both university- and student-sponsored teaching awards, including the Emory Center for Teaching and Curriculum's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Martin's research focuses on ichnology, the study of modern and fossil traces, such as tracks, trails, burrows, nests, and other signs of behavior. Among his notable achievements is his co-discovery of the only known burrowing dinosaur. Dr. Martin has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications, as well as three books, including Introduction to the Study of Dinosaurs.

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