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Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of different species. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny [ 1 ] (the evolution of species). The science began in the classical era , continuing in the early modern period with work by Pierre Belon who noted the similarities of the skeletons ...
The term "homology" was first used in biology by the anatomist Richard Owen in 1843 when studying the similarities of vertebrate fins and limbs, defining it as the "same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function", [6] and contrasting it with the matching term "analogy" which he used to describe different structures ...
The history of the camel provides an example of how fossil evidence can be used to reconstruct migration and subsequent evolution. The fossil record indicates that the evolution of camelids started in North America (see figure 4e), from which, six million years ago, they migrated across the Bering Strait into Asia and then to Africa, and 3.5 ...
Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last common ancestor of those groups.
C4 plants use a different metabolic pathway to capture carbon dioxide but also have differences in leaf anatomy and cell biology compared to most other plants. Trunk, a single woody stem came about in unrelated plants: paleozoic tree forms of club mosses, horsetails, and seed plants.
However, the criteria for defining convergent as opposed to parallel evolution are unclear in practice, so that arbitrary diagnosis is common. When two species share a trait, evolution is defined as parallel if the ancestors are known to have shared that similarity; if not, it is defined as convergent.
The term "percent homology" is often used to mean "sequence similarity”, that is the percentage of identical residues (percent identity), or the percentage of residues conserved with similar physicochemical properties (percent similarity), e.g. leucine and isoleucine, is usually used to "quantify the homology."
Phenetics – Attempt to classify organisms based on overall similarity; Species 2000 – Federated taxonomic database system for species checklists; Taxon – Grouping of biological populations; Taxonomic rank – Level in a taxonomic hierarchy; Type (biology) – Specimen(s) to which a scientific name is formally attached