View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does the Burgess Shale represent that occurred 570 million years ago?
(a) The "Precambrian Explosion."
(b) The "Prezoaic Explosion."
(c) The "Anthropological Explosion."
(d) The "Cambrian Explosion."

2. What do the levels range from in the taxonomy of life?
(a) Kingdom to species.
(b) Phyla to classes.
(c) Orders to genera.
(d) Phyla to species.

3. What association does Gould make with progress and evolution?
(a) Evolution is progress.
(b) Evolution doesn't always involve progress.
(c) Evolution is scattered progress.
(d) Evolution always involves progress.

4. What does Gould represent the original interpretation as?
(a) "The ladder and the cone."
(b) "The chair and the ladder."
(c) "The step and the bowl."
(d) "The cone and the rod."

5. How many new arthropod designs does The Burgess Shale contain?
(a) Twenty.
(b) Twelve.
(c) Sixty.
(d) Fifty.

6. What did Walcott think Opabinia was just another one of?
(a) Crustacean.
(b) Plant.
(c) Mollusk.
(d) Anemone.

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

8. Which genus was Whittington focused on classifying in Chapter Three?
(a) Splendens.
(b) Marrella.
(c) Minillera.
(d) Hartoll.

9. What kind of drama does Gould wish to recount that led to rejecting Walcott's interpretation?
(a) Intellectual.
(b) Emotional.
(c) Physical.
(d) Spiritual.

10. Who discovered Harry Whittington's analysis of fauna decades later?
(a) Des Collins.
(b) Walcott.
(c) Rutherford.
(d) Sebastian.

11. Which creatures are representative of these four classes that survived the first great extinction?
(a) Snails, crabs and dragonflies.
(b) Eurypterid, mollusk, sea cucumbers.
(c) Dragonfly, a fossil eurypterid, a crab and a trilobite
(d) Dragonfly, crabs, and trilobites.

12. When was the famed "death of the dinosaurs?"
(a) 20 million years ago.
(b) 100 thousand million years ago.
(c) 65 million years ago.
(d) 10 million years ago.

13. What kinds of versions does the story of the Burgess Shale's discovery have?
(a) An old, less accurate version and a newer, more accurate version.
(b) A old, more accurate version and a newer, less accurate version.
(c) A newer, less accurate version and an older, more accurate version.
(d) Two of more or less the same version.

14. Why did Whittington dissect Opabinia?
(a) To look at its heart.
(b) To uncover its bodily appendages.
(c) To find its liver.
(d) To uncover its organs.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. When did Whittington begin studying Opabinia?

3. How many levels are there in the taxonomy of life?

4. How was Walcott's taxonomy significantly updated?

5. What did Whittington conclude about Yohoia in 1975?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 456 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample