225021
Description
Flashcards by Tracie Irvin, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Tracie Irvin
over 10 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| Anagenesis | The slow and gradual transformation of a single species over time |
| Macroevolution | A sub field of evolutionary studies that focuses on long-term evolutionary changes, especially the origins of a new species and their diversification across space and million of years of geological time |
| Polymorphous | Describes alleles that come in a range of different forms |
| Mutation | The creation of a new allele for a gene when the portion of the DNA molecule to which it corresponds is suddenly altered |
| Cladogenesis | The birth of a variety of descendant species from a single ancestral species |
| Acclimatization | A change in the way the body functions in response to physical stress |
| Gene Flow | The exchange of genes that occurs when a given population experiences a sudden expansion due to in-migration of outsiders from another population of the species |
| Species | A reproductive community of populations (reproductively isolated from others ) that occupies a specific niche in nature |
| Natural Selection | A two-step, mechanistic explanation of how descent with modifications take place; 1-every generation, variant individuals are generated within a species due to genetic mutation. 2- those variant individuals best suited to the current environment survive and produce more offspring than other variants |
| Microevolution | A sub field of evolutionary studies that devotes attention to short-term evolutionary changes that occur within a given species over relatively few generations of ecological time |
| Genetic Drift | Random changes in gene frequencies from one generation to the next due to a sudden reduction in population size as a result of a disaster, disease, or the out-migration of a small subgroup from a larger population |
| Gene Pool | All the genes in the bodies of all the members of a given species (or population of a species) |
| Isotopic Dating | Dating methods based on scientific knowledge about the rate at which various radioactive isotopes of naturally occuring elements transform themselves into other elements by losing subatomic particles |
| Law of superposition | A principle of geological interpretation stating that layers lower down in a sequence of strata must be older than the layers above them and, therefore, that objects embedded in lower layers must be older than objects embedded in upper layers |
| Assemblage | Artifacts and structures from a particular time and place in an archaeological site |
| Stratum | Layer; in geological terms, a layer of rock and soil |
| Biostratigraphic Dating | A relative dating method that relies on patterns of fossil distribution in different rock layers |
| Relative Dating | Dating methods that arrange material evidence in a linear sequence, each object in the sequence being identified as older or younger that another object |
| Seriation | A relative dating method based on the assumption that artifacts that look alike must have been made at the same time |
| Analogy | Convergent, or parallel, evolution, as when two species with very different evolutionary histories develop similar physical features as a result to a similar environment |
| Homology | Genetic inheritance due to common ancestry |
| Diurnal | Describes animal that are active during the day |
| Hominin | humans and their immediate ancestors |
| Sexual Dimorphism | The observable phenotypic differences between males and females of the same species |
| Cranium | Bones of the head excluding the jaw |
| Prehensile | The ability to grasp, with fingers, toes, or tail |
| Stereoscopic Vision | A form of vision in which the visual field of each eye of a two-eyed (binocular) animal overlaps with the other, producing depth perseption |
| Anthropomorphism | The attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman animals |
| Taxonomy | A biological classification of various kinds of organisms |
| Nocturnal | Describes animals that are active during the night |
| Mandible | The lower jaw |
| Acheulian Tradition | A Lower Paleolithic stone-tool tradition associated with Homo Erectus and characterized by stone bifaces, or "hand axes" |
| Taphonomy | The study of the various processes that objects undergo in the course of becoming part of the fossil and archaeological records |
| Cranial Capacity | The size of the brain case |
| Middle Stone Age (MSA) | The name given to the period of Mousterian stone-tool tradition in Africa, 200, 000-40, 000 years ago |
| Homo Erectus | The species of large-brained, robust hominins that lived between 1.8 and 0.4 mya |
| Neandertals | An archaic species of Homo that lived in Europe and Western Asia 130,000- 35,000 years ago |
| Mousterian Tradition | A Middle Paleolithic stone-tool tradition associated with Neanderthals in Europe and Southwestern Asia and with anatomically modern human beings in Africa |
| Oldowan Tradition | A stone-tool tradition named after the Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania), where the first specimens of the oldest human tools (2-2.5 mya) were found |
| archiac Homo sapiens | Hominins dating from 500,000 to 200,000 years ago that possessed morphological features found in both Homo erectus and Homo sapiens |
| Replacement Model | The hypothesis that only one sub-population of Homo erectus, probably located in Africa, underwent a rapid spurt of evolution to produce Homo sapiens 200,000-100,000 years ago. After that time, H.spaiens would itself have multiplied and moved out of Africa gradually populating the globe and eventually replacing populations of H. erectus or their descendents |
| Upper Paleolithic Late Stone Age (LSA) | The name given to the period of highly elaborate stone-tool traditions in Europe in which blades were important, 40,000-10,300 years ago |
| Omnivorous | Eating a wide range of plant and animal foods |
| Bipedalism | Walking on two feet rather than four |
| Blades | Stone tools that are at least twice as long as they are wide |
| Homo habilis | The species of large-brained, gracile hominins 2 million years old and younger |
| Composite tools | Tools such as bows and arrows in which several different materials are combined (eg., stone, wood, bone, ivory, antler)to produce the final working implement |
| Assumptions | Basic, unquestioned understanding about the way the world works |
| Evidence | What is seen when a particular part of the world is examined with great care. Scientists use two different kinds of evidence - Material and Inferred |
| Hypotheses | Statements that assert a particular connection between fact and interpertation |
| Myths | Stories that recount how various aspects of the world came to be the way they are. The power of myths comes from their ability to make life meaningful for those that accept them. The truth of myths seems to be self evident because the effectively integrate personal experiences with a wider assumption about the way society or the world in general must operate. |
| Objectivity | The separation of observation and reporting from the researcher's wishes |
| Science | The inventions of explanations about what things are, how they work and how they came to be. That can be tested against evidence in the world itself. |
| Scientific Theory | A coherently organized series of testable hypotheses used to explain a body of material evidence. |
| Testability | The ability of scientific hypotheses to be matched against nature to see whether they are confirmed or refuted |
| Anthropology | The study of human nature, human society and human past |
| Comparison | A characteristic of Anthropological perspective that requires Anthropologists to consider similarities and differences in as wide a range of human societies as possible before generalizing about human nature, human society, or the human past. |
| Applied Anthropology | The subfield of anthropology in which anthropologists use information gathered from the other anthropological specialties to solve practical cross-cultural problems. |
| Archaeology | A cultural anthropology of the human past involving the analysis of material remains left behind by earlier societies |
| Bio-Cultural Organisms | organisms whose defining features are codetermined by biological and cultural factors ( in this case, human beings) |
| Biological Anthropology | The specialty of Anthropology that looks at human beings as biological organisms and tries to discover what characteristics makes them different from other organisms and what characteristics they share |
| Cultural Anthropology | The specialty of Anthropology that shows how variation in the beliefs and behaviors of members of different human groups is shaped by the sets of learned behaviors and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society- that is by culture. |
| Culture | Sets of learned behavior and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society. Human beings use culture to adapt to and transform the world in which they live. |
| Ethnography | An anthropologists' written or filmed description of a particular culture |
| Ethnology | The comparative study of two or more cultures |
| Evolution | A characteristic of the Anthropological perspective that requires Anthropologists to place their observations about human nature, human society, or the human past in a temporal framework that takes into consideration change over time. |
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