Principles of Evolution

6. A feature that allows an organism to better survive in its environment.
8. The study of extinct organisms or fossils.
10. All the individuals of a species that live in an area.
14. A measure of the ability to survive and produce more offspring relative to other members of the population in a given environment.
15. The geological processes that shape Earth are uniform through time.
16. structures Remnants of organs or structures that had a function in an early ancestor.
17. The process of biological change by which descendants come to differ from their ancestors.

1. selection A mechanism by which individuals that have inherited beneficial adaptations produce more offspring on average than other individuals.
2. structure Structures that perform a similar function but are not similar in origin.
3. States that natural disasters such as floods and volcanic eruptions have happened often during Earth's long history.
4. structures Are features that are similar in structure but appear in different organisms and have different functions.
5. The ability of a trait to be passed down from one generation to the next.
7. A group of organisms so similar to one another that they can reproduce and have fertile offspring.
9. Changes in land forms resulted from slow changes over a long period of time.
11. Traces of organisms that existed in the past.
12. The difference in the physical traits of an individual from those of other individuals in the group to which it belongs.
13. selection The process by which humans change a species by breeding it for certain traits.