week 7

Question 1

who was the dude who made binomial nomenclature?

Answer 1

Carl Linnaeus

Question 2

what is taxonomy

Answer 2

the science of naming and allocating organisms into related groups.

Question 3

The part scientific name of a species; composed of a genus name and a species epithet; written in italics.

Answer 3

binomial naming

Question 4

in Tyrannosaurus rex, what is Tyrannosaurus? rex?

Answer 4

tyrannosaurus is genus, rex is species

Question 5

what is the rule of priority? what is an example?

Answer 5

in taxonomic law, a rule that states whoever names something first gets the keep the name

Question 6

define interspecific variation

Answer 6

when individuals differ in morphology because they belong to different species.

Question 7

define intraspecific variation

Answer 7

morphological variations bw individuals of the same species

Question 8

define sexual dimorphism

Answer 8

when individuals differ in morphology between males and females, aside from genitalia

Question 9

define ontogenetic variation

Answer 9

when you can see between young individuals and old individuals of the same species.

Question 10

define individual variation

Answer 10

when there are normal differences that exist among individuals of a given species. E.g. hair or eye colour.

Question 11

define taphonomic variation

Answer 11

when fossil records appear to be different due to plastic deformations

Question 12

define the biological species concept. explain a fault of it

Answer 12

a group of organisms that can interbreed

problem: dead things don’t breed, so we can only speculate.
also what about populations that are separate but theoretically could interbreed if they are brought together, like

Question 13

define a population

Answer 13

a collection of organisms that live in the same area at the same time that can interbreed called

Question 14

what the fuck is a lumper?

Answer 14

paleontologists that require more differences before they consider two species to be distinct

Question 15

what the fuck is a splitter?

Answer 15

paleontologists that require less differences before they consider two species to be distinct

Question 16

what is a holotype?

Answer 16

a physical example of a species that is representative of that species - does not need to be complete, just enough to distinguish it from other species

Question 17

what is the morphological species concept? what are some faults associated with it?

Answer 17

organisms that share a degree of physical similarity

problems are that if we go off physical differences, we might get stuck bc dinos can look similar –> we need really unique holotypes to distinguish them

Question 18

we find a small hesperonychus skeleton. how can we be sure it was a new species and not just a juvenile of another species?

Answer 18

• unique features on the pelvis
• pelvis was fully fused, suggesting it was an adult