Darwin & Key Ideas
A group of similar organisms that can mate with one another and produce offspring.
What is a species?
When organisms need the same limited food, water, or shelter.
What is called competition?
Preserved evidence showing that organisms lived in the past and that life has changed over time.
What are fossils?
This type of rock is most likely to contain fossils.
What is sedimentary rock?
Scientists call this diagram a "calendar of Earth's history"
What is the Geologic Time Scale?
This term means changes in a species over time.
What is evolution.
The example of fish releasing hundreds of eggs, but only a few offspring reach adulthood.
What is overproduction?
Similar structures in different organisms suggest this.
What is common ancestry?
The material where most fossils form and become buried within.
What is sediment?
A division of geologic time smaller than an eon.
What is an era?
The scientist who proposed natural selection.
Who is Charles Darwin?
The process in which organisms with helpful traits survive and reproduce.
What is natural selection?
This diagram shows evolutionary relationships among organisms.
What is branching tree?
Where the oldest fossils are found within undisturbed rock layers.
What is the bottom rock layers.
The collection of fossils and the information they provide about past life.
What is the fossil record?
A trait that helps an organism survive and reproduce in its environment.
What is an adaptation?
Organisms best suited to their environment are more likely to do this.
What is survive and reproduce?
The molecule scientists compare to study relatedness.
What is DNA?
When no living members of a species remains.
What is extinction?
The environmental change that scientists theorize that may have caused mass extinctions.
What is climate change?
The difference between individuals of the same species, such as different fur colors in rabbits.
What is variation?
Inherited traits that improve survival become more common through this process.
What is natural selection?
These similarities in organisms' skeletons provide evidence of evolutionary relationships.
What are similarities in bone structures?
The extinction of many species in a short geologic time.
What is mass extinction?
Determining whether a fossil is older or younger than another.
What is relative dating?