| A | B |
|---|
| Fossils | remains of organisms preserved in the earth that provide evidence of the variety of living things that have existed at different times during Earth's history |
| Imprint | film of carbon remains |
| Age of fossils | determined by radioactive isotopes |
| Common Ancestry | If species change over time, there should be examples of living species that may have come from a common ancestor |
| Jean Baptiste Lamarck | explained that living things evolve because an organism can acquire a new trait during a lifetime and pass it on to its offspring; couldn't produce evidence of theory |
| Charles Darwin | proposed the Current Theory of Evolution - Natural Selection |
| Extinction | When all of a species has died |
| Fossilization | The process by which organisms are preserved |
| Genetic Isolation | Where no gene flow occurs between members of two populations |
| Geographic Isolation | When populations do not come into contact with each other due to where they live |
| Mass Extinction | When a huge number of species die off in a short period of time. |
| Speciation | Process by which a new species develops and evolves from an existing species |
| Permian Extinction | mass extinction that occurred 250 million years ago; 90% of species in oceans went extinct, as well as some land animals |
| Cretaceous Extinction | mass extinction that occurred 65 million years ago; more than half of Earth's species, including dinosaurs went extinct |
| Overproduction | when a plant or animal reproduces, there are usually more offspring than can survive in the environment |
| Variation | within a species there are differences between individuals, possibly caused by genetic mutations |
| Unicellular organisms | made up of a single cell and were first cells in the oceans 3.8 billion years ago |
| Multicellular organisms | made up of many cells and first formed about 1.2 billion years ago |
| Types of fossils | bones, minerals, prints, frozen organisms, and organisms preserved in sap (amber) |
| Relative dating | when one fossil is compared to another fossil in order to determine which was formed first |
| Absolute (Radiometric) dating | tells when the fossil was formed due to the radioactive material found in the fossil |
| Evidence | information from observations and experiments |
| Theory | a widely accepted statement based on scientific evidence that helps explain a group of facts |
| Similar structures | structures that are alike and shared by many different species |
| Similarities in devleopment | when several organisms in the early stages of development look similar; as they develop, they look less similar |
| Genes | codes on DNA for traits in organisms |
| Evolution | a change in the kind of organism over time; process by with modern organisms have descended from ancient organisms |
| Natural variation | the differences among individuals of a species |
| Struggle for existence | the competition among members of a species for food, living space, and the other necessities of life |
| Adaptation | any inherited characteristic that increases an organism's chance of survival |
| Survival of the fittest | the process by which individuals that are better suited to their environment survive and reproduce most successfully; also called natural selection |
| Natural selection | the process by which members of a species that are better suited to their environment survive and reproduce mose successfully; also called survival of the fittest |
