xenology
/zɛˈnɒlədʒi
/noun
(Chiefly in science fiction) the scientific study of alien biology, cultures, etc.According to published hypotheses, this distribution might result from vertical inheritance of ancestral genes via speciation, from one or more horizontal transfers (xenology), or from a mixture of both....
- Molecular homologies can reflect the phylogeny of either species or genes and can reveal a complexity of pattern unknown in morphology, with orthology contributing to species phylogenies and paralogy and xenology contributing to gene phylogenies.
- 1 Postmodernism is highlighted by an emphatically interdisciplinary nature: we can be certain that we won't be seeing departments of xenology being set up at universities.
Derivatives
xenologist
- Primatology has heaped up examples of how similar to humans Apes are, to the extent that it seems unlikely now that a xenologist from Rigel 5 could differentiate a human from a chimpanzee.
- The original Zarkov seems to be a german scientist, a xenologist, from the 23rd. century.
- The first is human, a repressed xenologist named A. A. Zivancevic; the other is Shar, a member of the Laeske species.
Origin
1950s: from Greek xenos 'stranger, foreigner', (adjective) 'strange'.