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Descent with modification
The idea that living species are descendants of ancestral species that were different from present day ones
Also defined more narrowly as change in genetic composition of a population from generation to generation |
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| A preserved remnant or impression of an organism that lived in the past |
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| A rock layer formed when new layers of sediment cover old ones and compress them |
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| Scientific study of fossils |
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| The principle that events in the past occured suddenly and caused different mechanisms than those that operate today |
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| The principle that mechanisms of change are constant over time |
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| Inherited characteristics of an orgnism that enhances it survival and reproduction in a specific environment |
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| A process in which individuals that have certain inherited traits tend to survive and reproduce at higher rates than other individuals because of those traits |
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| The selective breeding of domesticated plants and animals to encourage the occurance of desirable traits |
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| Similarity in characteristics resulting from shared ancestry |
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| Structures in different species that are similar because of common ancestry |
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| A feature of an organism that is a historical remnant of a structure that served a function in the organism's ancestors |
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| A branching diagram that reflects a hypothesis about evolutionary relationships among a group of orgnisms |
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| The evolution of similar features in independent evolutionary lineages |
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| Having characterisitcs that are similar because of convergant evolution, but not homology |
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| The study of the past and present geographic distrivution of species |
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| The supercontinent that formed near the end of the Paleoizic era, when plate movements brought all the landmasses on Earth together |
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| Referring to a species that is confined to a specific geographic area |
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