Natural Selection Vocabulary Flashcards
A characteristic that improves an individual’s ability to survive and reproduce in a particular environment.
Adaptation
A group of organisms that are closely related and can mate to produce fertile offspring.
Species
The process in which inherited characteristics within a population change over generations such that new species sometimes arise.
Evolution
The remains or physical evidence of an organism preserved by geological process.
Fossil
A historical sequence of life indicated by fossils found in layers of the Earth’s crust.
Fossil Record
A genetically determined characteristic.
Trait
The human practice of breeding animals or plants that have certain desire characteristics.
Selective Breeding
The process by which individuals that are better adapted to their environment survive and reproduce more successfully that less well adapted individuals do; theory to explain the mechanism of evolution.
Natural Selection
The period between the birth of one generation and the birth of the next generation.
Generation Time
The formation of new species as a result of evolution.
Speciation
Any method of determining whether an event or object is older or younger than other events or objects.
Relative Dating
Any method of measuring the age of an object or event in years.
Absolute Dating
The standard method used to divide the Earth’s long natural history into manageable parts.
Geologic Time Scale
Describes a species that has died out completely.
Extinct
The theory that explains how large pieces of the Earth’s outermost layer, called tectonic plates, move and change shape.
Plate tectonics
