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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through The Burgess Drama, Act 2. A New View Takes Hold: Homage to Opabinia, 1975.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What are the evidences for Opabinia that are considered undeniable?
(a) The shape of its carapace and the segments of its trunk.
(b) The shape of its gut and the segments of its trunk.
(c) The shape of its trunk and the segments of its gut.
(d) The segments of its gut and the shape of its trunk.

2. What is the Burgess Shale?
(a) A territory of British Columbia.
(b) The Canadian Rockies.
(c) The smallest collection of fossils ever discovered.
(d) The largest collection of fossils ever discovered.

3. How does Walcott group the Burgess arthropods among the arthropod phylum?
(a) Hardly.
(b) Narrowly.
(c) Widely.
(d) Minutely.

4. Where was Opabinia quoted to belong?
(a) In the third genus.
(b) With the arthropods.
(c) Nowhere among the known animals.
(d) Among the crustaceans.

5. What pushed Whittington beyond the idea he struggled under?
(a) Opabinia.
(b) Yohoia.
(c) Wiwaxia.
(d) Marella.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Gould's perspective, what historical understanding does the Burgess shale offer humanity?

2. What type of evidence concerning Opabinia is considered to be decisive?

3. Why did Whittington dissect Opabinia?

4. What did Marella have that no trilobite shared?

5. What was Whittington armed with that helped him review the claim that Opabinia was an arthropod?

(see the answer key)

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