Evolution Vocabulary

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Fossils

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Preserved remains of once-living organisms.

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Population

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All the inhabitants of a particular town, area, or country.

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Punctuated Equilibrium

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Rapid evolutionary change to a species followed by years of stability.

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Bottleneck Effect

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Genetic drift that results from an event that drastically reduces the size of a population.

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Vestigial Structures

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Remnants of an organ or structure that functioned in an earlier ancestor.

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Natural Selection

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A process in which individuals that have certain inherited traits tend to survive and reproduce at higher rates than other individuals because of those traits.

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Homologous Structures

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Similar structures in different species that share a common ancestor.

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Analogous Structures

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Structures in different species that serve similar functions but do not share a common ancestor.

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Convergent Evolution

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The process where organisms from different evolutionary backgrounds develop similar traits.

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Descent with Modification

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The principle that each living species has descended, with changes, from other species over time.