BIOEE 1780 PRELIM 1 FLASHCARDS
Fossil
remains or traces of once living organisms
Lagerstätten
storage place
Burgess Shale
preservation of soft tissues by rapid, burial, anoxic conditions
Absolute Dating
determining the number of years that have elapsed since an event occurred or the specific time when that event occurred
Relative dating
rocks and structures are placed in chronological order, establishing the age of one thing as older or younger than another
geologic time scale
contains the eras and periods within the Phanerozoic Era
superposition
in an undeformed sequence, the oldest rocks are at the bottom and the youngest rocks are at the top
lateral continuity
layers continue laterally over distances
original horizontality
layers of the strata are deposited horizontally, or nearly horizontally and parallel or nearly parallel to the earth’s surface.
cross-cutting
any geologic feature that cross cuts across strata must have formed after the rocks they cut through were deposited
index fossil
a fossil that can be used to determine the age of the strata in which it is found and to help correlate between rock units
carbon dating
Parent is C-14 daughter is N-14. half life of the parent is 5,730
Effective dating range: 100- 100,000
uranium-lead dating
Parent isotope: U-235, Daughter Isotope: Pb-207, half life of parent: 71.3 million, effective dating range: 10 million- 4.6 billion.
potassium-argon dating
radiometric dating technique that uses the decay of 39K and 40Ar in potassium bearing minerals to determine the absolute age.
Precambrian and Phanerozoic Eons
cambrian, ordovician, silurian, devonian, carboniferous, permian
Eras and Periods within Phanerozoic
Paleozioc, Mesozoic, cenozoic
Phylogeny
visual representation of the evolutionary history of populations, genes, or species
Tips
descendents of the ancestor
Branches
lineage evolving through time that connects successive speciation or other branching events
Nodes
point in a phylogeny where a lineage splits
internal nodes
node that occurs within a phylogeny and represents populations or species
monophyletic
describes a group of organisms that form a clade
clade
is a single branch in the tree of life, each clade represents an organism and all its descendants
paraphyletic
describes a group of organisms that share a common ancestor
outgroup
group of organisms that is outside of the monophyletic group being considered.
taxon (taxa)
group of organisms that a taxonomist judges to be a cohesive taxonomic unit, such as a species or order.
MRCA
nodes indicate tge most recent common ancestor and the root is the most recent common ancestor of the whole taxa
character
heritable aspect of organisms that can be compared across taxa
synapomorphy
a trait that arose in the ancestor of a phylogenetic group and is present in all of its members (shared derived trait)
homoplasy
presence in multiple groups of a trait that is not inherited from the common ancestor of those groups.
convergent evolution
independent origin of similar traits on separate evolutionary lineages
evolutionary reversal
describes the reversion of a derived character state to form resembling its ancestral state
vestigial
trait that is less elaborate than its ancestor
synapomorphy
trait that arose in the ancestor of a phylogenetic group and is present in all of its members (shared derived trait)
closely related species
will have more similar DNA sequences
distantly related species
will have different DNA sequences
Slowly evolving characters
can show relationships between distantly related taxa
rapidly evolving characters
can reveal relationships between closely related taxa
edges
line in the tree diagram
cladogram
branching order or topology (length has no meaning)
Phylogram
cladogram with branch length that reflect the amount of evolutionary change (scaled to reflect the number of nucleotide changes in the phylogram
Chronogram
types of cladogram with branch lengths that are calibrated to real time; nodes indicate estimated ages of ancestors
Synapomorphy
indicated next to a clade in brackets
Saurischian Clade
contains sauropods and the theropods
Ornthischian dinosaurs
pubis bone points posteriorly