Cards (16)

  • Homologous features

    Physical features shared between species because of a common ancestor, like particular skeletal structures
  • Vestigial structures

    Reduced or non functional versions of features that serve little to no function to an organism
  • Analogous features

    Physical features that evolved separately in different organisms in response to the same environmental pressures, like how most species have eyes
  • Convergent evolution

    When two separate species evolve to have common traits independantly
  • Homologous genes

    Related genes found in different species used to determine if and when those species were evolutionarily related to each other
  • Fossils
    Preserved remains of previously living organisms or their traces, dating from the distant past
  • Strata
    Layers of rock that build up which provide a sort of timeline for roughly dating fossils
  • Phylogenetic tree

    Diagram that represents evolutionary relationships among organisms (hypotheses not definite facts)
  • Taxa
    blanket term for groups used for categorizing organisms like domain, family, species, subspecies, group
  • Branch
    Line on a phylogenic tree
  • Branch point (internal node)

    Where two branches diverge on a phylogenic tree
  • Divergence event

    When one population species gets far enough away from the rest of it that it becomes its own distinct species, branch point on a phylogenic tree
  • Most recent common ancestor
    At every branch point, the last animal that both species at the end of two different branches both descend from
  • Root
    First line on a phylogenic tree, where all the species on it share their last most recent common ancestor
  • Relatedness
    Measure of how recent two species' last common ancestor was
  • Polytomy
    A branch point that has three or more different species coming off of it, showing that we don't have enough information to determine a more specific branching order