Terms : Hide Images
| 283169123 | Stromatolites | layered rocks that form when certain prokaryotes bind thin films of sediment together | |
| 283169124 | polymers | large compound formed from combinations of many monomers | |
| 283169125 | Protocells | droplets with membranes that maintained an internal chemistry different from that of their surroundings | |
| 283169126 | Self-Replicating RNA | first genetic material was probably RNA, have ribozymes that catalyze many diff. reactions, RNA can code for and replicate=dual role | |
| 283169127 | Ribozymes | An enzymatic RNA molecule that catalyzes reactions during RNA splicing. | |
| 283169128 | Macroevolution | the hypothesis that processes similar to those at work in microevolution can, over eons of time, transform an organism into a completely different kind of organism | |
| 283169129 | Radiometric Dating | a method of determining the absolute age of an object by comparing the relative percentages of a radioactive (parent) isotope and a stable (daughter) isotope | |
| 283169130 | Geologic Record | The division of Earth's history into time periods, grouped into three eons—Archaean, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic—and further subdivided into eras, periods, and epochs. | |
| 283169131 | Continental Drift | the hypothesis that states that the continents once formed a single landmass, broke up, and drifted to their present locations | |
| 283169132 | Plate Tectonics | the theory that pieces of Earth's lithosphere are in constant motion, driven by convection currents in the mantle | |
| 283169133 | Pangaea | (plate tectonics) a hypothetical continent including all the landmass of the earth prior to the Triassic period when it split into Laurasia and Gondwanaland | |
| 283169134 | Evo-devo | Evolutionary developmental biology; a field of biology that compares developmental processes of different multicellular organisms to understand how these processes have evolved and how changes can modify existing organismal features or lead to new ones. | |
| 283169135 | Paedomorphosis | The retention in an adult organism of the juvenile features of its evolutionary ancestors. | |
| 283169136 | Phylogeny | (biology) the sequence of events involved in the evolutionary development of a species or taxonomic group of organisms | |
| 283169137 | Analogy | drawing a comparison in order to show a similarity in some respect | |
| 283169138 | Systematics | the classification of living organisms in terms of their natural relationships; it includes describing, naming, and classifying the organisms | |
| 283169139 | Taxonomy | practice of classifying plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships | |
| 283169140 | Binomial | The two-part latinized name of a species, consisting of genus and specific epithet. | |
| 283169141 | Genus | (biology) taxonomic group containing one or more species | |
| 283169142 | Family | (biology) a taxonomic group containing one or more genera | |
| 283169143 | Orders | In classification, the taxonomic category above family. | |
| 283169144 | Classes | In classification, the taxonomic category above order. | |
| 283169145 | Phyla | the second largest taxonomic category in the animal kingdom | |
| 283169146 | Kingdoms | The major groups into which living thing are classified. Animal, Plant, Fungi, Protists, Bacteria, Archaea. There is currently much debate about the validity of the traditional classification groups in light of new evidence of evolutionary relationships. | |
| 283169147 | Domains | a taxonomic category above the kingdom level; the three domains of life are Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya | |
| 283169148 | Taxon | A named taxonomic unit at any given level of classification. | |
| 283169149 | Phylogenetic Trees | a branching diagram that represents a hypothesis about the evolutionary history of a group of organisms | |
| 283169150 | Cladistics | a system of biological taxonomy based on the quantitative analysis of comparative data and used to reconstruct cladograms summarizing the (assumed) phylogenetic relations and evolutionary history of groups of organisms | |
| 283169151 | Clades | a group of species that includes an ancestral species and all its descendants. | |
| 283169152 | Monophyletic | Pertaining to a taxon derived from a single ancestral species that gave rise to no species in any other taxa. | |
| 283169153 | Shared Ancestral Character | A character, shared by members of a particular clade, that originated in an ancestor that is not a member of that clade. | |
| 283169154 | Shared Derived Character | an evolutionary novelty unique to a particular clade | |
| 283169155 | Outgroup | A species or group of species that is closely related to the group of species being studied, but clearly not as closely related as any study-group members are to each other. | |
| 283169156 | Ingroup | In a cladistic study of evolutionary relationships among taxa of organisms, the group of taxa that is actually being analyzed. | |
| 283169157 | Parsimony | extreme stinginess | |
| 283169158 | Molecular Clock | Model that uses DNA comparisons to estimate the length of time that two species have been evolving independently | |
| 283169159 | Three Domain System | A system of taxonomic classification based on three basic groups: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya | |
| 283169160 | Horizontal Gene Transfer | The transfer of genes from one genome to another through mechanisms such as transposable elements, plasmid exchange, viral activity, and perhaps fusions of different organisms. |
