Synapomorphy

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A derived trait that is shared by two or more taxa of shared ancestry.

    "Another supposed synapomorphy of Rhamporhynchidae + Pterodactyloidea presented by Unwin (1995) is the subequal length of metacarpals I–III. In all non-pterodactyloid specimens where this region is known metacarpals I–III are about the same length. Therefore this feature cannot be used as a synapomorphy of Rhamporhynchidae + Pterodactyloidea."

Example

More examples

"Another supposed synapomorphy of Rhamporhynchidae + Pterodactyloidea presented by Unwin (1995) is the subequal length of metacarpals I–III. In all non-pterodactyloid specimens where this region is known metacarpals I–III are about the same length. Therefore this feature cannot be used as a synapomorphy of Rhamporhynchidae + Pterodactyloidea."

Etymology

From syn- + apomorphy.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.