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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What did the "death of the dinosaurs" boundary make possible?
(a) The development of large tortoises and sharks.
(b) The development of rodents.
(c) The development of smaller mammals.
(d) The development of large mammals like humans.

3. What does Gould focus on to bring the Burgess Shale into clear view?
(a) Technical perfection
(b) Opabinia's dissection.
(c) Whittington's insight.
(d) Des Collin's insight.

4. What does Gould determine about the difference between eukaryotic fauna and the Burgess fauna?
(a) The difference is microscopic.
(b) The difference is close.
(c) The difference is minimalist.
(d) The difference is vast.

5. What is the most common organism among the Burgess Shale fossils?
(a) Signi marella.
(b) Marrella splendens.
(c) Titilla splendens.
(d) Sanctocaris.

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

7. What did Whittington conclude about Yohoia in 1975?
(a) Yohoia is an unknown trilobite.
(b) Yohoia does not fit anywhere.
(c) Yohoia is in multiple systems.
(d) Yohoia is a known arthropod.

8. What did Whittington attempt to do to many of the new species found in the Burgess Shale?
(a) Reproduce them.
(b) Classify them into an already existing taxonomy.
(c) Cyrogenically preserve them.
(d) Dissect them for a museum show.

9. What could Whittington not figure out to do about Marrella?
(a) Which class to make up.
(b) Which class it did not belong to.
(c) Which two classes to classify it in.
(d) Which existing phyla to classify it in.

10. Of Whittington's team, who was more methodologically conservative?
(a) Simeon Martin.
(b) Conway Morris.
(c) Derek Briggs.
(d) Whittington.

11. What is so strange about Opabinia that paleontologists found it unbelievable?
(a) The structure.
(b) The function.
(c) The diagnosis.
(d) The proboscis.

12. What was Whittington's first monograph about?
(a) Opabinia.
(b) Splendens.
(c) Marrella.
(d) Goroia.

13. Who was America's "greatest paleontologist and scientific administrator"?
(a) Charles Walmont.
(b) Charlie VanGuarden.
(c) Dr. Doolittle.
(d) Charles Doolittle Walcott.

14. When did Whittington publish his first monograph?
(a) 1974.
(b) 1971.
(c) 1987.
(d) 1969.

15. When did Whittington begin studying Opabinia?
(a) 1980.
(b) 1978.
(c) 1975.
(d) 1890.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What pushed Whittington beyond the idea he struggled under?

3. What part did Whittington dissect of Opabinia?

4. What make up periods?

5. After publishing his first monograph, which two graduate students did Whittington employ?

(see the answer keys)

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