Question

what is the different between ancestral character and derived character？Please give me a example.

Answer 1

Hey @13xyhuang2.. Well, the ancestral character is the primitive character state which is present in the common ancestor of a clade. That character is considered to be the original condition within that particular clade.
On the other hand, the derived character is the character state which is present in one or more sub-clades, but not all, of that particular clade. It is a modified state of the primitive condition of that character which has cropped up during evolution of the clade. The presence of legs in dinosaurs, crocodile and lizards and the abscence of the later in snakes is an interesting example.

Refer to the following link for further details:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/phylogenetics_05