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  2. Evolution - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

    Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]

  3. Introduction to evolution - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_evolution

    The age of the Earth is about 4.5 billion years. [1] [2] [3] The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates from at least 3.5 billion years ago. [4] [5] [6] Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life (covered instead by abiogenesis), but it does explain how early lifeforms evolved into the complex ecosystem that we see ...

  4. Life history theory - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_history_theory

    Many factors can determine the evolution of an organism's life history, especially the unpredictability of the environment. A very unpredictable environment—one in which resources, hazards, and competitors may fluctuate rapidly—selects for organisms that produce more offspring earlier in their lives, because it is never certain whether they ...

  5. History of life - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_life

    The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...

  6. Evidence of common descent - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

    A study of four mammalian genera: Hyopsodus, Pelycodus, Haplomylus (three from the Eocene), and Plesiadapis (from the Paleocene) found that—through a large number of stratigraphic layers and specimen sampling—each group exhibited, "gradual phyletic evolution, overall size increase, iterative evolution of small species, and character ...

  7. Natural selection - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

    Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype.It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations.

  8. On the Origin of Species - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species

    4.3 Struggle for existence, ... David Quammen has suggested all these factors may have contributed, ... Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, ...

  9. Evolutionary biology - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_biology

    The basic mechanisms of evolution are applied directly or indirectly to come up with novel designs or solve problems that are difficult to solve otherwise. The research generated in these applied fields, contribute towards progress, especially from work on evolution in computer science and engineering fields such as mechanical engineering. [6]