Chapter 15 Vocab 2
Terms
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- absolute age
- the actual age in years of a fossil
- acquired trait
-
a trait not determined by genes but arising as a result of
experience or behavior - adapt
-
in populations, to change genetically over generations to become more
suited to the environment - adaptation
-
an inherited trait that increases an organismÂ’s chance of survival in
a particular environment - adaptive advantage
- a favorable trait in an organism
- adaptive radiation
-
an evolutionary pattern in which many species evolve from
a single ancestral species - analogous structure
-
in evolution, structures in more than one organism that
have similar appearance and function but different embryological origin - artificial selection
-
breeding of organisms by humans for specific phenotypic
characteristics - biogeography
-
study of the geographical distribution of fossils and living
organisms - cast
-
a type of fossil formed when sediments fill in the cavity left by a
decomposing organism - coevolution
-
the mutual evolution of two different species interacting with each
other - conserve
- the act of preserving genes that remain unchanged in DNA
- convergent evolution
-
the process by which unrelated species become more
similar as they adapt to the same kind of environment - divergent evolution
-
the process of two or more related species becoming
more and more dissimilar - extinction
- the dying out of a species
- fitness
-
a measurement of the ability of a species to respond to the pressures of
natural selection; the ability of individuals to survive to propagate their
genes - fossil
- the remains or traces of a once-living organism
- homologous features
-
similar features that originated in a shared
ancestor - law of superposition
-
a law that states that successive layers of rock or soil
were deposited on top of one another and the lowest level is oldest - mass extinction
-
one of the brief periods of time during which large numbers
of species disappeared - mold
-
a type of fossil formed from an impression of the shape or tracks of an
organism; in fungi, a mass of tangled filaments of cells, such as the fungus that
grows on bread - natural selection
-
the process by which organisms with favorable variations
reproduce at higher rates than those without such variations - population
-
all the members of a species that live in the same area and make up
a breeding group - relative age
-
the comparative ages of fossils found within a single
stratum - sediment
- dust, sand, or mud deposited over time by wind or water
- stratum
- in geology, a layer of soil or rock in a cross section of the Earth
- uniformitarianism
-
a principle that states that the geological structure of Earth
resulted from cycles of observable processes and that these processes operate
continuously - vestigial
-
referring to a functionless structure that was functional in an ancestral
species