Natural Selection
What is a random change in an organism's DNA that serves as the main source of new trait variations?
What is a mutation?
Even though human arms, bat wings, and whale flippers have different jobs, they all share this exact underlying structural arrangement.
What is the shared skeletal pattern (1 upper bone, 2 lower bones, wrist bones, and digits)?
According to the Law of Superposition, where are the oldest fossils and rock layers located in an undisturbed cliff face?
What is at the bottom?
What do the intersections or branch points (nodes) on a cladogram represent?
What is a shared common ancestor?
What process occurs when humans—rather than nature—intentionally choose and breed organisms for desirable traits?
What is selective breeding (or artificial selection)?
True or False: Individual organisms can decide to change their traits during their lifetime to adapt to their environment.
What is false?
The small, useless pelvis and leg bones inside modern ocean whales prove they evolved from ancestors that used to do this.
What is walk on land?
Fossilized footprints, animal burrows, and nests are classified as this main type of fossil
What is a trace fossil?
Free space!
When a patient misses doses of an antibiotic, which type of bacteria survive and multiply in their system?
What are bacteria with high resistance to the antibiotic?
An inherited trait that helps an organism survive and reproduce in its environment is called this.
What is an adaptation?
Name two early structural features do all vertebrate embryos share before their adult body plans specialize?
What are limb buds and temporary tails?
Preserved physical structures of an organism—such as bones, teeth, claws, or shells—are known as this type of fossil.
What is a body fossil?
Extinction happens when an entire species dies out because of this main reason.
What is the environment changing faster than the species can adapt (or lacking helpful traits to survive)?
Aside from stratigraphy (rock layers), what method do scientists use to determine the numerical age of fossils?
What is carbon dating?
In the "Fork Birds" activity, what selective pressure determined which birds survived and had more offspring?
What is limited food (or the efficiency of their beak shape in gathering food)?
What is the term for the evolutionary process where one original ancestral species splits into multiple distinct species that don't interbreed, such as Darwin's 13 Galápagos finch species?
What is speciation?
According to the vertebrate fossil progression, place these four groups in order from oldest to most recent: Mammals, Single Celled Organisms, Fish, Reptiles, Amphibians.
What is Single Celled Organisms - Fish - Amphibians - Reptiles - Mammals?
The rapid loss of species caused by human activities over the past 500 years may represent which major historical extinction event?
What is the sixth mass extinction event?
What famous transitional fossil demonstrates the evolutionary link between water-dwelling fish and four-legged land amphibians?
What is Tiktaalik?