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dentition

(Encyclopedia)dentition, kind, number, and arrangement of the teeth of humans and other animals. During the course of evolution, teeth were derived from bony body scales similar to the placoid scales on the skin of...

Shockley, William Bradford

(Encyclopedia)Shockley, William Bradford, 1910–89, American physicist, b. London. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology (B.S., 1932) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1936)....

Simpson, George Gaylord

(Encyclopedia)Simpson, George Gaylord, 1902–84, American paleontologist and zoologist, b. Chicago, Ph.D. Yale, 1926. He became assistant curator of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural Histor...

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 ...

Health and Human Services, United States Department of

(Encyclopedia)Health and Human Services, United States Department of, federal executive department charged with administering government health programs. Successor to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfar...

Paleolithic period

(Encyclopedia)Paleolithic period pāˌlēəlĭthˈĭk, –lēō–, pălˌ– [key] or Old Stone Age, the earliest period of human development and the longest phase of mankind's history. It is approximately coexten...

creationism

(Encyclopedia)creationism or creation science, belief in the biblical account of the creation of the world as described in Genesis, a characteristic especially of fundamentalist Protestantism (see fundamentalism). ...

Spencer, Herbert

(Encyclopedia)Spencer, Herbert, 1820–1903, English philosopher, b. Derby. In 1848 he moved to London, where he was an editor at The Economist and wrote his first major book, Social Statics (1851), which tried to ...

Eve, in genetics

(Encyclopedia)Eve, in genetics, popular term for a theoretical female ancestor of all living people, also known as Mitochondrial Eve. In 1987 biochemist Allan C. Wilson proposed that all living human beings had inh...

skeleton, in anatomy

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Human skeleton skeleton, in anatomy, the stiff supportive framework of the body. The two basic types of skeleton found among animals are the exoskeleton and the endoskeleton. The shell of the ...