Evolutionary Ideas
Adaptations, Variations, and Isolation
Natural Selection
Earth’s History
Speciation
100
The process of how organisms acquire adaptations over time is called this.
What is evolution?
100
This is an inherited trait that helps an organism survive.
What is an adaptation?
100
In order for natural selection to occur populations must do this.
What is over-reproduce?
100
The geologic time scale is divided into these two categories.
What are eras and periods?
100
Relative dating is a method of sequencing events in this order.
What is the order they happen?
200
Proposed a hypothesis to explain how living things change over time.
Who is Charles Darwin?
200
Members of each species compete regularly for food and other necessary resources.
What is a the struggle for existence?
200
Darwin concluded that the mechanism for evolution is this.
What is natural selection?
200
There have been this number of mass extinctions in Earth’s history.
What is five?
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
These two scientists explained that the Earth and it's features have been shaped by geological forces acting over long periods of time.
Who are Hutton and Lyell?
300
fitness
What is the ability of an individual to survive and reproduce in its specific environment?
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.
What is 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.
What is the principle of superposition?
400
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
Who proposed that organisms acquired or lost traits during their lifetime by selective use or disuse of organs?
400
A species of snail living in the same population displays differences in shell stripe patterns.
What is genetic variation?
400
List and explain the 4 steps that sufficiently summarize the process of natural selection.
What is
Populations over-reproduce: All organisms produce more offspring than can survive to adulthood and reproduce. Survivors that are able to reproduce pass their traits on to their offspring.

Individuals in a population vary: There is random variation in traits among individuals in a population of a species. Even though the variations are by chance, they are then passed on.

Favorable adaptations are selected:When an environment changes, selection of favorable traits occurs. Adaptations that fit well with the environment are passed to the offspring.

Favorable adaptations accumulate: Over many generations favorable adaptations accumulate. This may eventually lead to a new species.
400
The theory of plate tectonics describes this.
What is how the continents move?
400
Explain how relative dating of fossils differs from absolute dating of fossils.
What is
When scientist use relative dating to age fossils they just compare the age of the fossil “relative” to other fossils or the Earth’s layers. They state whether it is younger or older than other fossils or layers?

When scientists use absolute dating to age fossils they determine the estimated time frame or year of the fossil by the radioactive decay of elements.
500
Predicted that the human population will grow faster than the space and food supplies needed to sustain it
Who is Thomas Malthus?
500
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What is directional selection
500
Explain how Darwin’s observations of finches in the Galapagos Islands led to his ideas about natural selection.
What is
He observed that finches on the islands were slightly different from those found on the mainland. He also noted slight differences in finches from island to island.

The difference that he found most notable was the differences in beak shape. It appeared to be different based on the type of food eaten, and therefore Darwin concluded that the finches were adapted for the type of food they ate.

From his observations, Darwin hypothesized that an ancestral species of finch from the mainland ended up on the Galapagos, and the finches were scattered to different environments. Then, they had to adapt to different conditions, and over many generations evolved into new species.
500
Give 3 pieces of evidence to support Wegener’s theory that today’s continents were once part of an earlier supercontinent.
What is
Fossils or plants and animals found on different continents were similar.
There were matching geologic features on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
The continents seem to fit together like a puzzle.
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.
What is
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.
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