Principles of Evolution

4. A feature that allows an organism to better survive in its environment.
5. A measure of the ability to survive and produce more offspring relative to other members of the population in a given environment.
8. A group of organisms so similar to one another that they can reproduce and have fertile offspring.
10. The difference in the physical traits of an individual from those of other individuals in the group to which it belongs.
11. structures Are features that are similar in structure but appear in different organisms and have different functions.
12. The geological processes that shape Earth are uniform through time.
13. The study of extinct organisms or fossils.
14. structures Remnants of organs or structures that had a function in an early ancestor.
16. selection A mechanism by which individuals that have inherited beneficial adaptations produce more offspring on average than other individuals.

1. Traces of organisms that existed in the past.
2. Changes in land forms resulted from slow changes over a long period of time.
3. structure Structures that perform a similar function but are not similar in origin.
6. selection The process by which humans change a species by breeding it for certain traits.
7. States that natural disasters such as floods and volcanic eruptions have happened often during Earth's long history.
9. All the individuals of a species that live in an area.
11. The ability of a trait to be passed down from one generation to the next.
15. The process of biological change by which descendants come to differ from their ancestors.