Adaptation
An inherited trait that helps an organism survive.
Evolution
The process of how organisms acquire adaptations over time.
Ancestor
An organism from which others have descended
Cladogram
A tree like diagram that displays revolutionary relationships among living spices and their ancestors
Homologus structures
Body structures that have a common origin but do not necessarily perform the same function.
Vertebrate
Animals with a backbone
Fossil
A remnant or trace of an organism from the past, such as a skeleton or a leaf imprint, embedded and perserved in earths crust.
Fossil record
A historical sequence of life based on the sequence of fossils.
Natural selection
The process by which organisms with favorable adaptations survive and reproduce at a higher rate than organisms with less favorable adaptations.
Invertebrate
Animals without a backbone
Genetic variation
The variety of alleles in a population
Extinction
this occurs when the environment changes and the adaptations of a species are no longer sufficient for its survival.
Uniformitariansim
Using the present as a key to the past is consistent with the idea of
Mass extinctions
Periods of large scale extinctions
Absolute dating
A method of estimating the age of a rock sample in years
Half life
The amount of time it takes for half of the unstable atoms in a sample to decay.
Geologic time scale
A model of the history of life on earth.
Geology
The study of earths formation and structure.
Rock cycle
The process of rock formation and recycling.
Superposition
The principle that states that in lawyers of sedimentary rocks the lowest layer were the earliest to be deposited.
Relative dating
A method of sequencing events in the order in which they happened
Paleontologist
A scientist who studies fossils
Pangea
An ancient supercontinent that broke apart to fro today’s continents
Plate tectonics
A theory that describes how the continents move
Lithospheric plates
Giant pieces of solid rock on earths surface.