Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

218 results found

lobster

(Encyclopedia)lobster, marine crustacean with five pairs of jointed legs, the first bearing large pincerlike claws of unequal size adapted to crushing the shells of its prey. The segmented body of the lobster consi...

adaptation

(Encyclopedia)adaptation, in biology, has several meanings. It can mean the adjustment of living matter to environmental conditions and to other living things either in an organism's lifetime (physiological adaptat...

continental drift

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Continental drift (arrows indicate the directions of motion of the landmasses) A. Proposed reconstruction of the supercontinent Pangaea indicating the major present landmasses B. Proposed recon...

DNA fingerprinting

(Encyclopedia)DNA fingerprinting or DNA profiling, any of several similar techniques for analyzing and comparing DNA from separate sources, used especially in law enforcement to identify suspects from hair, blood, ...

exobiology

(Encyclopedia)exobiology or astrobiology, search for extraterrestrial life within the solar system and throughout the universe. Philosophical speculation that there might be other worlds similar to ours dates back ...

anthropology

(Encyclopedia)anthropology, classification and analysis of humans and their society, descriptively, culturally, historically, and physically. Its unique contribution to studying the bonds of human social relations ...

spider

(Encyclopedia)spider, organism, mostly terrestrial, of the class Arachnida, order Araneae, with four pairs of legs and a two-part body consisting of a cephalothorax, or prosoma, and an unsegmented abdomen, or opist...

science

(Encyclopedia)science [Lat. scientia=knowledge]. For many the term science refers to the organized body of knowledge concerning the physical world, both animate and inanimate, but a proper definition would also hav...

crustacean

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Internal anatomy of a female crayfish, representative of the class Crustacea crustacean krŭstāˈshən [key], primarily aquatic arthropod of the subphylum Crustacea. Most of the 44,000 crusta...

ovum

(Encyclopedia)ovum ōˈvəm [key], in biology, specialized plant or animal sex cell, also called the egg, or egg cell. It is the female sex cell, or female gamete; the male gamete is the sperm. The study of the ovu...