common ancestor
collocation in Englishmeaningsofcommonandancestor
These words are often used together. Click on the links below to explore the meanings. Or,see other collocations withancestor.
common
adjective
uk/ˈkɒm.ən/us/ˈkɑː.mən/
the same in a lot of places or for a lot ...
See more atcommon
ancestor
noun[C]
uk/ˈæn.ses.tər/us/ˈæn.ses.tɚ/
a person related to you who lived a long ...
See more atancestor
(Definition ofcommonandancestorfrom theCambridge English Dictionary© Cambridge University Press)
Examplesofcommon ancestor
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
And is there onecommonancestorfor sauceboat, saucebox, saucepan, and saucy?
From theCambridge English Corpus
It should be noted that rare recombination does not, in principle, greatly affect our estimate of the number of specificities present in thecommonancestor.
From theCambridge English Corpus
After the scattering phase ends the collecting phase takes over and proceeds until the most recentcommonancestorof the remaining ancestral lineages is reached.
From theCambridge English Corpus
A nonhyperthermophiliccommonancestorto extant life forms.
From theCambridge English Corpus
And we can infer something of the stages immediately before thatcommonancestor.
From theCambridge English Corpus
There is evidence that this process may have commenced prior to the lastcommonancestor, but if so, it was still in its infancy.
From theCambridge English Corpus
If significant lexical similarity is found among a sub-set of languages, this similarity is assumed to have resulted from shared descent from acommonancestor.
From theCambridge English Corpus
This raises the possibility that the claustrum may have arisen with thecommonancestorof placental and marsupial mammals.
From theCambridge English Corpus
Therefore, human cognitive advances are only 5-6 million years old, the date of our lastcommonancestor, which is very young by evolutionary standards.
From theCambridge English Corpus
This estate must have been inherited from acommonancestor, minimally three generations above these men.
From theCambridge English Corpus
He suggests that ourcommonancestormay have possessed an "intentionality detector module" and an "eye detector module," both of which are apparent in chimps.
From theCambridge English Corpus
Sympatric species are subjected to similar abiotic pressures, and congenerics presumably diverged relatively recently from acommonancestor.
From theCambridge English Corpus
First, elements from this family may have stopped transposing before the host species split from theircommonancestor.
From theCambridge English Corpus
Such conservation of tetraspanin gene structure strengthens the assumption that these molecules derive from acommonancestor.
From theCambridge English Corpus
The lineage is a collection of nuclear families who are related to each other and to acommonancestorthrough blood.
From theCambridge English Corpus
It does not say why those two species still possess that trait, or why that trait evolved in thecommonancestorin the first place.
From theCambridge English Corpus
However, at some stage (before the lastcommonancestor) this evolution was effectively frozen.
From theCambridge English Corpus
Moreover, early neumations of the chant are independent of one another to the extent that they do not seem to descend from acommonancestor.
From theCambridge English Corpus
Alternatively, three clades may have shared virulence genes originating from acommonancestor.
From theCambridge English Corpus
Lineages were ranked by the degree to which they were descended from acommonancestor.
From theCambridge English Corpus
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
Want to learn more?
Go to the definition ofcommon
Go to the definition ofancestor
See other collocations withancestor