Cladogram

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Summary: The Cladogram. The perfect tool to organize common ancestry and progression of traits. For example lets look at the image above. Starting with sharks what the cladogram tells us is that it came earlier then all the animals after it going to the right and that it has a vertebrae.  Now lets skip to the crocodiles . What the cladogram shows us about the crocodile is that it came after everything to the left of the crocodile. Also it had  a vertebrae, a bony skeleton, four limbs, amniotic egg, and eggs with shells. Those were some tips on how to read a cladogram.

S&EP: Using Data: Now you may be wondering how to craft this cladogram. Well you must start with information you know. For example by looking at the animals skeleton you can tell many different things. You can see how many fingers the animal has, has four legs, if its skeleton is made of bones,and  if it has a vertebrae. With these pieces you can already tell where it can generally be placed on the time line. If it has for example four limbs it cant be anywhere below the mark of four limbs because that trait was not developed yet. If you want to get more exact then if the organism is still alive check out other features. Does it have hair? Does it have an amniotic egg? These can also place it further up on this cladogram. Then last of all how did you even get this fossil. From a sedimentary rock most likely. Sediment rocks hold the secrets to when this animal was alive.  Now you have a beautiful cladogram to show you everything you need to know.

XCC: Cause and Effect: Evolution is just a trickle effect. One organism breeds with another and after that if changes the course of that family lines history. Lets say that there is a species of white rabbits and they only ever breed with white rabbits. Then there is no chance for there to ever be brown rabbits. Until one day they do cross breed with a brown rabbit because the white rabbits fur was no longer blending in.  Then now the rabbits will and can pass down traits of brown rabbits. The effect of this new mix is that the white rabbits won;t be as common because first of all now they brown rabbits have started to cross breed with them and also the brown rabbits have better camouflage.That is how evolution changes so quickly and why we have so much diversity. One breeding can change everything.