Campbell 9th Edition
Terms : Hide Images
| 547090871 | macroevolution | the broad pattern of evolution above the species level | |
| 547090872 | protocells | abiotic precursor of a living cell that had a membrane-like structure and that maintained an internal chemistry different from that of its surroundings | |
| 547090873 | vesicles | fluid-filled compartments bounded by a membrane-like structure | |
| 547090874 | montmorillonite | a soft mineral clay produced by the weathering of volcanic ash and greatly increases the rate of vesicle self-assembly | |
| 547090875 | ribozymes | RNA catalysts; some ribozymes can make complementary copies of short pieces of RNA if they are provided nucleotide building blocks. | |
| 547090876 | strata | sedimentary rock layers | |
| 547090877 | radiometric dating | common technique in determining the "absolute age" of a fossil; based on the decay of radioactive isotopeswhere a radioactive "parent" isotope decays to a "daughter" isotope at a fixed rate | |
| 547090878 | half-life | expresses rate decay; the time required for 50% of the parent isotope to decay | |
| 547090879 | tetrapods | "four-foot" mammals, amphibians, and reptiles belong to this group of animals | |
| 547090880 | geologic record | formed from the study of fossils that helps establish Earth's history; divided into three eons: Archaen, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic | |
| 547090881 | stromatolites | layered rocks that form when certain prokaryotes bind thin films of sediment together | |
| 547090882 | endosymbiont theory | theory in which mitochondria and plastids were formerly small prokaryotes that began living within larger cells | |
| 547090883 | plastids | a general term for chloroplasts and related organelles | |
| 547090884 | endosymbiont | refers to a cell that lives within another cell, called the host cell | |
| 547090885 | serial endosymbiosis | hypothesis that supposes mitochondria evolved before plastids through a sequence of endosymbiotic events | |
| 547090886 | Cambrian explosion | the phenonmenon in which many present-day animal phyla appear suddenly in fossils formed early in the Cambrian period | |
| 547090887 | plate tectonics | theory in which the continents are part of great plates of Earth's crust that essentially float on the hot, underlying portion of the mantle | |
| 547090888 | continental drift | plates moving over time because of movements in the mantle | |
| 547090889 | Pangaea | a supercontinent 250 million years ago formed from the previously separated landmasses due to plate movements | |
| 547090890 | mass extinction | large numbers of species become extinct throughout Earth | |
| 547090891 | ocean anoxia | low-oxygen condition from the Permian mass extinction that would have suffocated oxygen-breathers and promoted the growth of anaerobic bacteria that emit a poisonous metabolic by product (hydrogen sulfide gas) | |
| 547090892 | adaptive radiations | periods of evolutionary change in which groups of organisms form many new species whose adaptations allow them to fill different ecological roles, or niches, in their communities; fuels diversity | |
| 547090893 | heterochrony | "different-time" an evolutionary change in the rate or timing of developmental events | |
| 547090894 | paedomorphosis | "of a child-formation" if reproductive organ development accelerates compared to other organs, the sexually mature stage of a species may retain body features that were juvenile structures in an ancestral species | |
| 547090895 | homeotic genes | master regulatory genes that determine basic features | |
| 547090896 | exaptation | structures that evolve in one context but become co-opted for another function | |
| 547090897 | species selection | the species that endure the longest and generate the most new offspring species determine the direction of major evolutionary trends |
