BIODIVERSITY and EVOLUTION

• Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the past.
• The observation that certain fossils were associated with certain rock strata led 19th-century geologists to recognize a geological timescale.
• The process by which nature selects, from the genetic diversity of organisms, including the traits that would help an individual to survive and reproduce in a constantly changing environment is called evolution.
• Homologous structures

  
• Convergence is an increase in similarities among species derived from different ancestors as a result of similar adaptation to a similar environment.
• divergent evolution is the splitting of an ancestral population into two or more sub-populations that are geographically isolated from one another.
• Analogous structures

  
• The study of the development of an organism to its adult form is known as embryology.
• Comparative Embryology