Defining Evolution
A group of organisms that are closely related and can mate to produce fertile offspring.
What is a Species?
This term describes body parts that are similar in different species because they were inherited from a common ancestor.
What are Shared Structures?
The student paleontologists' main task was to decide where this object belonged in the museum.
What is the Mystery Fossil?
A trait that helps an organism survive and reproduce in its current environment.
What is an Adaptive Trait?
Evidence that comes from the physical world, such as fossils or lab observations.
What is Empirical Evidence?
The process by which species change over very long periods of time.
What is Evolution?
Scientists use this phrase to describe the basic bone arrangement found in the limbs of humans, cats, and whales.
What is One-Two-Many?
The Mystery Fossil was originally compared to these three specific modern animals.
When an environment stays mostly the same over time, body structures tend to remain in this state.
What is Stability?
This type of scientist specifically studies fossils to learn about the history of life on Earth.
What is a Paleontologist?
This is what we call an older population from which two or more newer species descended.
What is a Common Ancestor Population?
These specific structures help scientists make final decisions about how closely two species are related.
What are Diagnostic Shared Structures?
This reproductive trait helped eliminate crocodiles as a relative of the Mystery Fossil.
What is Live Birth?
This happens when a single ancestor population evolves into two or more different descendant species.
What is Speciation?
To provide the strongest evidence, a scientist's observations must be both careful and this.
What is Precise?
A species that has died out completely and no longer has any living members.
What is Extinct?
Among any three species, the two that are most closely related are the ones that did this most recently?
What is Separated (or Split)?
Even though it looked like a crocodile, the Mystery Fossil shared this specific limb bone arrangement with wolves and whales.
What are Front Limbs?
Small changes in a population can build up to large differences in body structures over this much time.
What are Many Generations (or very long periods of time)?
Paleontologists know about extinct species primarily because of evidence found in these.
What are Layers of Rock?
The study of how different species are connect through common ancestors.
What is Relatedness?
This body part is a shared structure for all mammals, including the blue whale and the dire wolf.
What is the Vertebral Column (or Backbone)?
This is the final claim supported by evidence regarding the Mystery Fossil's placement.
What is Whales (Claim 1)?
When an environment changes, this process causes body structures to potentially change over many generations.
What is Natural Selection?
This digital tool allows students to navigate "Tree View" to find common ancestor populations.
What is the Evolutionary History Simulation?