View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When was the last dodo killed in Mauritius?
(a) 1530s.
(b) 1750s.
(c) 1680s.
(d) 1490s.

2. When the KT meteor that killed the dinosaurs hit Earth, what percentage of life on the planet perished?
(a) 40.
(b) 15.
(c) 70.
(d) 95.

3. A Swedish DNA study concludes that all modern humans descended from how many people in Africa?
(a) 10,000.
(b) 500.
(c) 80,000.
(d) 2,000.

4. The skeleton "Lucy" found in Ethiopia in 1974 is thought to come from the hominid species:
(a) Homo habilis.
(b) Kenyanthropus platyops.
(c) Australopithecines.
(d) Sahelanthropus tchadensis.

5. The oldest record of life found so far consists of fossilized traces of microbes discovered where?
(a) Finland.
(b) Greenland.
(c) Iceland.
(d) Poland.

6. What percentage of a person's genes are shared with all other humans?
(a) 65.7.
(b) 80.5.
(c) 72.8.
(d) 99.9.

7. How many chromosomes are there inside a human cell's nucleus?
(a) 32.
(b) 46.
(c) 21.
(d) 15.

8. What is the highest elevation that humans are able to live and survive on Earth continuously without special accommodations?
(a) 18,000 feet.
(b) 14,000 feet.
(c) 27,000 feet.
(d) 22,000 feet.

9. The author states that one scientist claimed there is less genetic diversity among the entire human population than there is among a:
(a) School of fish.
(b) Clan of chimpanzees.
(c) Cluster of bacteria.
(d) Group of giraffes.

10. Somewhere between three and two million years ago, how many hominid species co-existed before vanishing abruptly?
(a) Six.
(b) Twelve.
(c) Nine.
(d) Two.

11. Mitochondria convert food and oxygen into ATP, which is what?
(a) A self-destruction signal.
(b) Energy used by the body.
(c) A new generation of mitochondria.
(d) Waste that needs to be discarded.

12. Which of the following is not a DNA component?
(a) Uracil.
(b) Guanine.
(c) Cytosine.
(d) Adenine.

13. What organisms does the author say are the most enduring inhabitants of our planet?
(a) Spiders.
(b) Fungi.
(c) Humans.
(d) Bacteria.

14. When oceanographer Jacques Piccard and a U.S. Navy sailor descended more than 35,000 feet to the deepest part of the world's oceans, what happened?
(a) They were stranded there for days and nearly died.
(b) The power went out in their ocean capsule.
(c) They saw the remains of a sunken ship.
(d) They startled a flat fish upon touching down.

15. Of the available land on Earth, how much is suitable for people to live on?
(a) 47 percent.
(b) 3 percent.
(c) 26 percent.
(d) 12 percent.

Short Answer Questions

1. Anders Celsius, who designed the Celsius thermometer, was an:

2. Approximately 50 million years ago, Antarctica was:

3. In what year did Charles Darwin publish his famous book on natural selection called "On The Origin Of Species"?

4. The author mentions the case of bacteria surviving for two years in a sealed camera lens where?

5. What helped scientists start accepting the idea of ice ages?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 436 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample