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Chapter 10 Vocab
Chapter 10: The Principals of Evolution
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Evolution | the process of biological change by which descendants come to differ from their ancestors |
| Species | a group of organisms that are closely related and can mate to reproduce fertile offspring |
| Fossil | traces of organisms that existed in the past |
| Catastrophism | states that natural disasters such as flood and volcanic eruptions have happened often during Earth's long history |
| Gradualism | principle that states landforms resulted from slow changes over a long period of time |
| Uniformitarianism | states that geologic process that shape Earth are uniform through time |
| Variation | the difference in the physical traits of an individual from those of other individuals in the group to which it belongs |
| Adaptation | a feature that allows an organism to better survive and reproduce in its environment |
| Artificial Selection | 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 individuals that have inherited beneficial adaptations show different reproductive success |
| Population | all the individuals of a species that live in an area |
| Fitness | a measure of the ability to survive and produce more offspring relate to other members of the population in a given environment |
| Biogeography | the study of the distribution of organisms around the world |
| Homologous Structure | features that are similar in structure but appear in different organisms and have different functions |
| Analogous Structure | structures that perform a similar function but are not similar in origin |
| Vestigial Structure | remnants of organs or structure found in an early ancestor that no longer serve an useful function or may now serve a different function |
| Paleontology | the study of fossils or extinct organisms |