the natural place or environment in which a species or organism lives.

when an animal assumes a form of bipedalism on a permanent basis due to habit or anatomy.

the big, or first, toe.

the last carpal on the distal row; wedge-shaped.

in taxonomic classification, members of the suborder Haplorhini, including tarsiers, monkeys, apes and humans.

transverse lines that form at the ends of long bones in the body that develop as a result of intense nutritional stress during growth; similar to hypoplasia on the teeth.

a dietary category that describes animals that specialize in eating primarily plant material, such as grass.

the process of transmitting genetic material from parent to offspring.

when an organism has two or more different alleles at a particular locus in a chromosome.

in cladistics, a clade (i.e., group) that consists of a single common ancestor and all its descendants. Holophyletic of often preferred to its synonym monophyletic.

an area of permanent occupation by an individual or group of individuals. Males and females of the same species may have overlapping home ranges, but members of the same sex of a species will never have overlapping home ranges.

a term most commonly used to describe humans and our bipedal fossil relatives to the exclusion of the other large apes. In a formal sense, hominid reflects a classification that groups humans and their bipedal fossil relatives in the family Hominoidea to the exclusion of the apes who are placed in the families Hylobatidae (gibbon, siamangs) and Pongidae (orangutan, chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla).

a term most commonly used to describe the group that includes humans and our bipedal fossil relatives. In a formal sense, hominin reflects a new classification based on the close genetic relationship among humans and chimpanzees that places them in the subfamily Hominine and separates the humans and their close fossil relatives into a separate tribe. Under this scheme, humans and their close relatives are hominins.

a term most commonly used to informally describe the apes (gibbon, siamang, orangutan, chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla). In a formal sense, hominoid reflects a classification that places the large apes in the family Pongidae, the small apes in the family Hylobatidae, humans and their bipedal fossil relatives in the family Hominidae, and groups all of these in the superfamily Hominoidea. Under this scheme, all of these species are hominoids but the term is usually restricted to the apes only.

[adj. homologous] characters shared as a result of common ancestry.

characters that are similar but not the result of common ancestry; may be a result of convergent evolution and/or parallel evolution.

when an organism has two or more of the same alleles at a particular locus in a chromosome.

upper arm bone.

the distal cusp located on the lingual side of the upper molar.

the distal cusp located on the buccal side of the lower molar.

an assumption or guess, based upon observation, that may be supported or disproved through the scientific method.