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22 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Mass extinction |
Simultaneous loss of many lineages from Earth |
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Naturalists |
Person who observes life from a scientific perspective |
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Biogeography |
Study of patterns in the geographic distribution of species and communities |
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Comparative morphology |
Study of body plans and structures among group of organisms |
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Fossil |
Physical evidence of an organism that lived in the ancient past |
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Catastrophism |
Now-abandoned hypothesis that catastrophic geologic forces unlike those of the present day shaped Earth's surface |
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Evolution |
Change in a line of descent |
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Lineage |
Line of descent |
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Theory of uniformity |
Idea that gradual repetitive processes occurring over long time spans shaped Earth's surface |
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Artifical selection |
Selective breeding of animals by humans |
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Fitness |
Degree of adaptation to an environment, as measured by an individual's relative genetic contribution to future generations |
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Adaptation (adoptive trait) |
A heritable trait that enhances an individual's fitness |
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Natural selection |
A process in which environmental pressures result in the differential survival and reproduction of individuals of a population who vary in the details of shared, heritable traits |
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Half-life |
Characteristic time it takes for half of a quantity of a radioisotope to decay |
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Radiometric dating |
Method of estimating the age of a rock or fossil by measuring the content and proportions of a radioisotope and its daughter elements |
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Pangea |
Supercontinent that formed about 237 million years ago and broke up about 152 million years ago |
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Plate tectonics |
Theory that earth's outer layer of rock is cracked into plates, the slow movement of which rafts continents to new locations over geologic time |
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Gondwana |
Supercontinent that existed before Pangea, more that 500 million years ago |
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Homologous structures |
Similar body parts that evolved in a common ancestor |
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Morphological divergence |
Evolutionary pattern in which a body part of an ancestor changes in its descendents |
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Analogous structures |
Similar body strictures that evolved separately in different lineages |
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Morphological convergence |
Evolutionary pattern in which similar body parts evolve separately in different lineages |
