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Course: American Museum of Natural History > Unit 3
Lesson 1: Evolution: the basics (American Museum of Natural History)- Introducing Darwin and natural selection
- Charles Darwin's evidence for evolution
- Glossary
- Evolution: a paleontologist's perspective
- Phylogenetic trees
- What is a Tree of Life?
- The science of speciation – molecular adaptation in vampire bats
- Quiz: Evolution by natural selection
- Exploration Questions: Evolution by natural selection
- Answers to Exploration Questions: Evolution by natural selection
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Glossary
adaptation: A change in an organism that improves its ability, and the ability of its offspring, to survive in an environment.
Cambrian Explosion: A roughly ten-million-year period that began about 542 million years ago, during which all of the most complex life forms appeared.
common ancestor: An ancestor shared by two or more descendant species.
natural selection: An evolutionary mechanism whereby individuals tend to pass on to future generations heritable features that enable them to cope better with their environment. Over time, populations of individuals will exhibit more of the better-adapted features.
primate: A member of the order Primates, which includes lemurs, monkeys, apes, and hominins.
variation: Genetic variation represents differences between individual members of a species. Variation comes from both recombination of parental DNA and genetic mutation.
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