click below
click below
Normal Size Small Size show me how
chapter 10 evolution
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Evolution | change inspecies over time |
| Species | group of organisms so similar to one another that they canbreed and produce fertile offspring. |
| fossils | trace of an organism from the past |
| Catastrophism | theory that states that natural disasters such as floods and volcanic eruptions shaped earths landforms and caused extinction of some species. |
| Gradualism | principle that states that the changes in landforms result from slow changes over a long period of time. |
| Uniformitarianism | theory that states that the geologic processes that shape earth are uniform through time. |
| Variation | differences in physical traits of an individual from the group to which it belongs. |
| Darwin | grandfather of evolution and natrual selection |
| Cuvier | catastrophism |
| Lamarck | had the theory that all organisms evolved towards perfection. |
| Linnaeus | he devoloped binomial nomenclature |
| Hutton | gradualism |
| Lyell | uniformitarism |
| adaptation | a feature that allows an organism to better survive in it's environment |
| artificial selection | the process by which humans change a species by breeding it for certain traits |
| heritability | the ability of a trait to be passed down from one generation to the next |
| natural selection | a mechanism by which individualism that have inherited beneficial adaptations produce more offspring more offspring on average than do other individuals. |
| fitness | the area on which an organism lives |
| population | the total # of people inhabiting a country city or any district or area |
| overproduction | excessive creation of a product |
| biogeography | the study of geographical distribution of living things |
| homologous | same structure different function |
| analogous | same function different structure |
| vestigial | refers to an organ or part structure |
| palentology | the science forms of life existing in former geological periods represented by their fossils |
| Buffon | French naturalist |
| Erasmus | grandfather of evolution, English naturalist and poet Darwin |