Rewrite in own words. very !
fossils can provide evidence of the features of extinct organisms that can scientists locate common ancestors of present-day species. for example, the fossil of a dinosaur that has characteristics of birds and reptiles scientists understand that present-day birds and reptiles share this common ancestor. comparison of dna sequences from different organisms also provides evidence of evolutionary relationships. organisms that have only recently split away from each another have dna sequences that match very closely, while organisms that split long ago have greater dna sequence differences. for example, the gene for a protein found in a horse will overlap in sequence fairly well with the gene from a cow, but will not overlap very well with the same gene from an earthworm.