Alec saw footage of a landslide on the news. He saw rocks falling from the side of a mountain, with some of them smashing into each other and breaking apart. Alec witnessed

genetic variation can be caused by mutation (which can create entirely new alleles in a population), random mating, random fertilization, and recombination between homologous chromosomes during meiosis (which reshuffles alleles within an organism's offspring).

igneous rocks which formed by the crystallization of magma at the surface of the earth called extrusive rocks. they are characterized by fine-grained textures because the rapid cooling at or near the surface did not provide enough time for large crystals to grow.