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Common descent is a concept in evolutionary biology applicable when one species is the ancestor of two or more species later in time. According to modern evolutionary biology, all living beings could be descendants of a unique ancestor commonly referred to as the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of all life on Earth.
During the Cenozoic, mammals proliferated from a few small, simple, generalised forms into a diverse collection of terrestrial, marine, and flying animals, giving this period its other name, the Age of Mammals. The Cenozoic is just as much the age of savannas, the age of co-dependent flowering plants and insects, and the age of birds. [40]
Proteomic evidence also supports the universal ancestry of life. Vital proteins, such as the ribosome, DNA polymerase, and RNA polymerase, are found in everything from the most primitive bacteria to the most complex mammals. The core part of the protein is conserved across all lineages of life, serving similar functions.
Darwin's finches. Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth.
The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth.Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence, mainly fossils.
Evolutionary psychology has traditionally focused on individual-level behaviors, determined by species-typical psychological adaptations. Considerable work, though, has been done on how these adaptations shape and, ultimately govern, culture (Tooby and Cosmides, 1989). [ 1 ]
Homology is the term used to characterize the similarity of features that can be parsimoniously explained by common ancestry. Homoplasy is the term used to describe a feature that has been gained or lost independently in separate lineages over the course of evolution.
A Cenozoic chronology based on mammal taxa has been defined on all the continents except Antarctica. [4]: 939 Because the continents have been separated through most of the Cenozoic, each continent has its own system. [5] Most of the units are based on assemblage zones, layers of strata that contain three or more distinctive fossils.