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Taxon
A taxonomic category or group, such as a phylum, order, family, genus, or species.
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Phylum
A group into which animals, plants, etc. are divided, smaller than a kingdom and larger than a class.
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Monophyleyic
A taxon, deliminated by Darwinian classification and therefore consisting exclusively of decendents of the nearest common ancestor
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Homologous
Similar in structure and evolutionary origin, though not necessarily in function, as the flippers of a seal and the hands of a human.
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Ontogeny
The origin and development of an individual organism from embryo to adult. Also called ontogenesis.
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Phylogeny
1. The evolutionary development and history of a species or higher taxonomic grouping of organisms. Also called phylogenesis.
2. The evolutionary development of an organ or other part of an organism: the phylogeny of the amphibian intestinal tract.
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Ungulate
Of or belonging to the former order Ungulata, now divided into the orders Perissodactyla and Artiodactyla and composed of the hoofed mammals such as horses, cattle, deer, swine, and elephants.
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Reptile
Any of various cold-blooded, usually egg-laying vertebrates of the class Reptilia, such as a snake, lizard, crocodile, turtle, or dinosaur, having an external covering of scales or horny plates and breathing by means of lungs.
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Therapsid
A group of synapsids that includes mammals and their immediate evolutionary ancestors. Other than the mammals, all lineages of the therapsids are extinct, with the last known non-mammalian therapsids dying out in the Early Cretaceous period (146 Ma to 100 Ma).
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Synapsidsa
Class of animals that includes mammals and everything closer to mammals than to other living amniotes.
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Amniote
A group of tetrapod vertebrates that have a terrestrially adapted egg. They currently include mammals (synapsids), and sauropsids (reptiles and birds), as well as their fossil ancestors.
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Lived (c.610 BC – c.546 BC).
Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia. According to available historical documents, he is the first philosopher known to have written down his studies. His ideas of creation included an emergence of life and man from a watery beginning. And while today we'd consider his thoughts fantastical, "they illustrate the beginning of a phenomenon sometimes called the "Greek miracle": men try to explain the nature of the world, not with the aid of myths or religion, but with material principles.
Through later references to his writings, he appears to be the earliest known proponent of a "natural" explanation to the origin and evolution of the present world.
Anaximander
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An early proponent of the idea that evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws. In the modern era, he is remembered primarily for a theory of inheritance of acquired characters.. However, his idea of soft inheritance was, perhaps, a reflection of the folk wisdom of the time, accepted by many natural historians. His contribution to evolutionary theory consisted of the first truly cohesive theory of evolution, in which an alchemical complexifying force drove organisms up a ladder of complexity, and a second environmental force adapted them to local environments through use and disuse of characteristics, differentiating them from other organisms.
Several recent studies, one conducted by researchers at MIT and another by researchers at the Tufts University School of Medicine, have rekindled the debate once again. As reported in MIT's Technology Review in February 2009, "The effects of an animal's environment during adolescence can be passed down to future offspring ... The findings provide support for a 200-year-old theory of evolution that has been largely dismissed, which states that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring.
Lived from 1744 to 1829.
Jean-Baptiste la Marck
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The idea that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring.
Lamarckism, Lamarckianism, Larmarckian evolution, or soft inheritance.
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