Phylogeny vocab
The study of evolutionary history using genomes and grouping organisms in groups called clades.
What is phylogeny?
The only group of dinosaurs to survive the asteroid impact and are still around today.
What is aves/birds?
What is taxonomy?
A name no longer used.
What is invalid taxon?
A trait that’s ancient and ancestral.
What is basal?
A phylogenetic grouping that includes a common ancestor and all of its descendants.
What is clade?
The clade that includes crocodilians, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs.
What is archosauria?
A name given to classify an organism, contains two words consisting of the genus and species.
What is scientific name?
A taxon whose phylogenetic placement is uncertain and all over the place.
What is wildcard taxon?
A novel feature evolved independently that isn’t shared by the common ancestor.
What is derived?
A diagram showing the evolutionary history and relationships of multiple clades. Similar to a family tree.
What is a cladogram?
A major group/clade of ornithischian dinosaur
What is Marginocephalia (ceratopsians and pachychephalosaurids), hadrosaurs, ornithopods, thyreophorans (ankylosaurs and stegosaurs), etc. (many correct answers)
The most specific classification in taxonomy.
What is species?
A taxon that’s existence is questionable and debated. Usually a specimen that isn’t complete enough to be named. Example: Troodon, a dinosaur named by a single tooth.
What is dubious taxon/nomen dubium?
A structure that is similar due to shared ancestry.
What is a homologous structure?
A word to describe a clade including a SINGLE common ancestor and its decedents.
What is monophyletic?
One of the two major clades in the saurischia
What is Theropods and/or Sauropods?
The first specimen of a taxa to be given that new scientific name.
A polyphyletic taxon used to arbitrarily classify organisms in when they aren’t sure what other name to give it. These taxa are invalid. Example: scientists used to call any large theropod “Megalosaurus”.
What is wastebasket taxon?
A trait that has the same function as another but evolved independently.
What is an analogous structure?
A dubious grouping containing multiple taxa based only on a trait and not on relation. This grouping includes many different unrelated taxa.
What is polyphyletic?
The clade that includes the archosaurs closest to birds (pterosaurs and dinosaurs).
What is ornithodira?
The specimen used to define a taxa, often the most representative individual specimen of that taxon. This is the specimen that’s looked back at to diagnose other specimens as that taxa.
What is holotype?
A taxon described based only on behavior fossils with no body fossils.
What is ichnotaxon?
An evolved trait of an ancestor shared by its descendants and often used to define a clade.
What is synapomorphy?