Week 8 Vocab: Evolution

Charles Darwin

British naturalist who first conceived the theory of evolution.

Adaptation

An evolved trait that serves a specific function.

Heritable trait

A characteristic that is part of an organism's genetic code and has a chance to be copied to the organism's offspring.

Evolution

Theory that states that the differential

success of certain variations of a heritable trait,

because of competition for limited resources,

leads to the change over time of

that trait in a population.

Natural Selection

The competitive selective process by

which detrimental traits are competitively

discarded and advantageous traits are retained.

Dinosauria

A group formed by ornithischians, saurischians, their most recent common ancestor and all of its descendents.

Ornithischia

A group formed by all hadrosaurs, ceratopsians,

ankylosaurs, and stegosaurs, their most recent common ancestor and all of its descendents.

Saurischia

A group formed by the theropods, sauropods and prosauropods, their most recent common ancestor and all of its descendents.

Character

Any heritable trait that can be described and labelled.

Synapomorphy/Shared derived character

A character that is present in two or more groups and their common ancestor, but is not present in any more distantly related groups.

Convergent Evolution

The independent evolution of similar structures in two different lineages, usually due to both lineages facing similar ecological or environmental pressures.