Trees
A group of organisms represented by a tip of a phylogenetic tree.
What is a species?
Traits found in the last common ancestor of multiple species.
What are ancestral traits?
Simply, a group of organisms.
What is a clade?
Evolution occurring over extremely long timescales
What is macroevolution?
The species that evolved 2.6MYA and set of the start of the sixth mass extinction
What are humans? (yay)
The primary group of interest in a phylogenetic tree.
What is the ingroup?
Traits shared among a group of organisms
What are derived traits or synapomorphies?
A clade containing a common ancestor and all its descendants.
What is a monophyletic group?
The process causing tectonic plates to slowly move.
What is continental drift?
The protective layer that formed around the Earth after cyanobacteria began photosynthesising
What is the ozone layer?
A split in a phylogeny, indicating the branching of two species.
What is a node?
Superficially similar traits evolving independently in multiple groups.
What is convergent evolution?
A clade without a common ancestor.
What is a polyphyletic group?
The sudden appearance of fossils resembling modern animal phyla in the Cambrian period.
What was the Cambrian explosion?
The respiration method used by early life.
What is anaerobic respiration?
The series of ancestor and descendant populations.
What is a lineage?
Characters reverting to an ancestral state.
What is evolutionary reversal?
A clade that includes a common ancestor, but only some of its descendants.
What is a paraphyletic group>
Using rates of isotopic decay to determine the age of a fossil
What is radiometric dating?
Changes within gene pools and single speciation events
What is microevolution?
What is the root?
Functionally similar structures that have independent evolutionary origins.
What are analogous characters?
The event triggered by the evolution of photosynthetic cyanobacteria.
What was the Oxygen Revolution?
Geological period, meaning 'middle life', ending after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
What is the Mesozoic?