A gradual change in some phenotypic characteristic from one population to the next.
What is a cline?
100
The naked surface around the nostrils, typically wet in mammals.
What is the rhinarium?
100
The study of the deposition of plant or animal remains and the environmental conditions affecting their preservation.
What is taphonomy?
100
The "cookie monster" ape.
What is Oreopithecus?
100
The principle that bone is placed in the direction of functional demand; that is, bone
develops where needed and recedes where it is not needed.
What is Wolf's Law?
200
A difference in a physical attribute between the males and females of a species.
What is sexual dimorphism?
200
Hominoids' pattern of lower molar cusps.
What is Y-5?
200
The radiometric dating method that can provide an absolute date for material younger than 50,000 years and that came about because of the development of the atomic bomb.
What is radiocarbon dating?
200
Paleocene organisms that may have been the first primates, originating from an adaptive radiation of mammals.
What are plesiadapiforms?
200
The proposition that certain primate traits, such as visual acuity, occurred in response to the availability of fruit and flowers following the spread flowering plants.
What is angiosperm radiation hypothesis?
300
The end portions of long bones; once they fuse to the diaphyses, the bones stop growing
longer.
What are epiphyses?
300
A tail that acts as a kind of a hand for support in trees, common in New World monkeys.
What is a prehensile tail?
300
Refers to various plate structures on Earth's surface.
What are tectonic plates?
300
Euprimates of the Eocene that were likely ancestral to modern lemurs and possibly ancestral to anthropoids.
What are adapids?
300
The principle that an animal's limb lengths are heat-related; limbs are longer in hot
environments and shorter in cold environments.
What is Allen's Rule?
400
A condition in which an organism is not able to breathe in adequate amounts of oxygen,
leading to low levels of oxygen in the blood, shortness of breath, and, in extreme situations, death.
What is hypoxia?
400
1. Of or designating the New World monkeys, distinguished from the Old World monkeys by widely separated nostrils that generally open to the side.
2. Having a broad flat nose.
What is platyrhine?
400
The time it takes for half of the radioisotopes in a substance to decay; used in various radiometric dating methods.
What is half-life?
400
The proposition that primates' unique suite of traits is an adaptation to living in trees.
What is the arboreal hypothesis?
400
The principle that the lower the stratum or layer, the older its age; the oldest layers are at the bottom, and the youngest are at the top.
What is Steno's Law of Superposition?
500
Biological changes that occur during an individual's lifetime, increasing the
individual's fitness in the given environment and that are not genetically inheretable.
What is functional adaptation?
500
Refers to a social group that includes one adult male, several adult females, and their offspring.
What is polygynous?
500
An absolute dating method based on the random reversals of Earth's magnetic field.
What is paleomagnetic dating?
500
The proposition that unique primate traits arose as adaptations to preying on insects and on small animals.
What is visual predation hypothesis?
500
The principle that an animal's size is heat-related; smaller bodies are adapted to hot
environments, and larger bodies are adapted to cold environments.