Geologic Timescale
This dating method determines the age of rocks or fossils by measuring the decay of radioactive isotopes.
What is radiometric dating?
The rapid appearance of most major animal phyla about 535–525 million years ago is known as this event.
What is the Cambrian explosion?
The two-part scientific naming system introduced by Linnaeus.
What is binomial nomenclature?
A taxonomic group at any level of the Linnaean hierarchy.
What is a taxon?
An evolutionary novelty unique to a particular clade (group).
What is a shared derived character?
This 1953 experiment demonstrated that organic molecules could form abiotically under early Earth conditions.
What is the Miller–Urey experiment?
RNA molecules capable of catalyzing chemical reactions are known by this name.
What are ribozymes?
A branching diagram that represents hypotheses about evolutionary relationships.
What is a phylogenetic tree?
The point on a phylogenetic tree where one lineage splits into two.
What is a branch point (node)?
Structures that evolved for one function but were later co-opted for another function are known as these.
What are exaptations?
This theory explains the origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts from free-living prokaryotes.
What is the endosymbiotic theory?
The buildup of atmospheric oxygen caused by photosynthetic organisms is referred to as this major event.
What is the oxygen revolution?
Two groups that share a most recent common ancestor not shared by any other group.
What are sister taxa?
A lineage belonging to an ingroup that diverges early on away from the rest of the ingroup.
What is a basal taxon?
Name the three domains of life.
Eukarya, Bacteria, and Archaea
These layered rock structures, formed by ancient prokaryotes, provide the earliest fossil evidence of life on Earth.
What are stromatolites?
The mass extinction that eliminated about 96% of marine species and marked the boundary between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras is called this.
What is the Permian extinction (the Great Dying)?
The evolutionary process responsible for analogous traits.
What is convergent evolution?
A character that originated in an ancestor of the taxon.
What is a shared ancestral character?
Name the five kingdoms of life.
This evolutionary process occurs when organisms rapidly diversify to fill newly available ecological niches, often after mass extinctions.
What is adaptive radiation?
Earth formed approximately this many years ago.
What is 4.6 billion years ago?
Genes found in different species that diverged after a speciation event.
What are orthologous genes?
Genes within a species that arose through duplication and may evolve new functions.
What are paralogous genes?
What are the seven taxa in order from most to least inclusive?
Domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species