Key Concept
Species _______ their body structures from their ancestor populations.
What is inherit?
a trait that makes it more likely that an individual will survive in a specific environment
What is an adaptive trait?
a specific characteristic of an individual organism
What is a trait?
a related organism from a previous generation
What is an ancestor?
The mystery fossils front limb structure
What is the "one, two, many front limb structure"?
_______ _______ that are shared between two species are evidence that these two species inherited the same structures. from a common ancestor population.
What are body structures?
the process by which the distribution of traits in a population changes over many generations
What is natural selection?
a group of individuals born and living at about the same time
What is a generation?
a group of the same type of organism living in the same area
What is a population?
Attaches legs to the backbone of the mystery fossil
What is a pelvis?
In populations separated into different __________, natural selection causes different changes to each population. This causes descendant species to end up with differences in their shared structures.
What is an environment?
having died out completely and no longer alive anywhere on Earth
What is extinct?
the process by which species adapt to environmental changes over a very long time
What is evolution?
living things such as plants, animals, and bacteria
What is an organism?
When the environment is mostly the ____ over time, body structures stay stable. When the environment changes over time, body structures may change due to natural selection.
What is the same?
evidence of life from the past, such as fossilized bones, footprints, or leaf prints
What is a fossil?
everything that surrounds an organism
What is an environment?
a more recent species that evolved from an ancestor population
What is a descendant species?
This attaches the head to the backbone on the mystery fossil
What is a neck?
Over many _________ and very long periods of time, many small changes can build up to large differences in the body structure.
What is a generation?
a body structure in two or more species that feature the same parts
What is a shared structure?
a random change to a gene that sometimes results in a new trait
What is mutation?
the very long time that spans the history of Earth, from the very first cellular life to the present
What is evolutionary time?
The type of teeth the mystery fossil has
What is a canine?