Evolutionary Relationships
Adaptations and Variations
Natural Selection
Earth's History & Fossil Record
Relative and Absolute Dating
100
This theory, proposed by Charles Darwin, explains how organisms acquire adaptations and change over time.
What is the Theory of Evolution?
100
This is an inherited trait that helps an organism survive.
What is an adaptation?
100
The driving force in evolution is.....
What is Natural selection?
100
By studying different layers of sedimentary rock, this chronological collection of remains proves that life started simple, branched into millions of diverse and complex species, and saw many of them go extinct.
What is the fossil record?
100
A method of ordering events and rock layers by comparing them to each other............
What is relative age dating?
200
All living things have this in their cells, suggesting a common ancestor.
What is DNA?
200
As a populations’ habitat changes over time, a species with a high level of genetic variation would have this.
What is a better chance of survival?
200
In the dark-colored forests, the dark moths were more likely to survive and do this, passing their "dark" genes to the next generation.
What is reproduce?
200
When a species like the Trilobite appears in many rock layers and then suddenly disappears from all newer layers, it documents this.
What are extinctions?
200
This is the amount of time it takes for half of the unstable atoms in a sample to decay.
What is a half-life?
300
Models that look like tree branches that show evolutionary history and that all living things have a common ancestor.
What are cladograms?
300
Peppered Moths have adapted to their habitat to protect themselves from predators. Which BEST describes this adaptation? A. mimicry B. camouflage C. parasitism D. mutualism
What is camoflage?
300
The climate of a certain area is cold, and snow is found on the ground most of the year. Equal numbers of two populations of rabbits are introduced into this climate by a group of scientists. One of the populations is brown and the other is white. Over several generations, this will happen.
There will be more white rabbits than brown rabbits
300
Alfred Wegener theorized that the continents were once a great landmass that he named this.
What is Pangaea?
300
This principle states that the layers of sedimentary rocks that are the “lowest” are the earliest to be deposited and the "top" layer would be the most recent.
What is the Law of Superposition?
400
Which is most likely to be related to a human based upon similar anatomical structures? A. flea B. fish C. coyote D. grasshopper
What is C, the coyote?
400
What best explains why the wing of a bat and a fin of a whale are similar? A. a mutation caused them to be similar B. they both share a common ancestor C. a simple coincidence between the two
What is they both share a common ancestor?
400
In the freezing Arctic, a "fit" animal usually has a high amount or a thick layer of this for insulation
What is blubber (or fat)?
400
The transitional fossils of the Archaeopteryx shows a creature with feathers like a bird but teeth and a long bony tail like a reptile, proving these two groups are related.
What are Birds and Dinosaurs?
400
Explain how relative dating of fossils differs from absolute dating of fossils.
Relative dating just gives a general order, absolute dating gives an age in years.
500
Over 99% of the DNA in chimpanzees and humans are identical, suggesting this.
What is that the two species share a common ancestor?
500
This is the term for an adaptation that has outlived its usefulness, like the human tailbone or the tiny leg bones inside a whale.
What is a vestigial structure?
500
Because the dark-colored mice are harder for predators to see on dark rocks, they are said to have higher______________________
What is fitness?
500
The fossil record of the Grand Canyon shows that as you climb higher, the organisms become more of this—moving from simple sea sponges at the bottom to reptiles at the top.
What is complex?
500
Fossils found in the lowest layers of undisturbed rock are not found in upper layers of the same undisturbed rock. Explain what happened to the species found in the lower rock layers and why this might have happened.
The earlier species became extinct.
The changing environments on Earth causing loss of habitat, increased competition, new predators, or catastrophes.
Lack of genetic variation within a species.