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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where is the Burgess Shale?
(a) The Appalachian Mountains.
(b) The Canadian Rockies.
(c) Mt. Everest.
(d) England.

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

3. How many general stages of fauna are between the two faunas both eukaryotic and of the Burgess Shale?
(a) Four.
(b) Two.
(c) Three.
(d) Five.

4. When does the old story have Walcott miraculously stumble upon the Burgess Shale?
(a) After his son stumbled upon it.
(b) Before his son fell onto the Shale.
(c) After his wife's horse tripped and fell onto it.
(d) After his pistol whipped the dust.

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

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

7. What was Whittington's 1979 monograph written about?
(a) Dissecting Sanctocrabis.
(b) Cataloging Marella splendens.
(c) Monitoring Wiwaxia.
(d) Cataloging Opabinia.

8. What are Marrella and Yohoia?
(a) Evolutionary cousins.
(b) Evolutionary dead-ends.
(c) Animals from another universe.
(d) Known animals from Earth.

9. Who newly interpreted the Burgess animals in 1971?
(a) Professor Matt Stephens and his wife.
(b) Dr. John Whit and his colleagues.
(c) Dr. Whittington of Yale and her husband.
(d) Professor Harry Whittington of Cambridge and his colleagues.

10. What cost comes with accepting Gould's picture of human evolution?
(a) Psychological cost.
(b) Monetary cost.
(c) Physical cost.
(d) Compensatory cost.

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

12. What is one of the first tasks of the paleontologist after producing a clear specimen?
(a) Write a monograph on observation alone.
(b) Categorize each file according to specimen.
(c) Classify the specimen in taxonomy.
(d) Naturalize the environment and take samples.

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

14. Which fossils was Whittington an expert of?
(a) Pitolimite fossils.
(b) Trilobite fossils.
(c) Bezoar fossils.
(d) Trixony fossils.

15. How many of these designs survived the first great extinction?
(a) Three.
(b) Ninety-eight.
(c) Twenty.
(d) Four.

Short Answer Questions

1. What kinds of versions does the story of the Burgess Shale's discovery have?

2. Of Whittington's team, who was more methodologically conservative?

3. What kind of lessons does Stephen Jay Gould draw from how the Burgess Shale was first interpreted?

4. How many new arthropod designs does The Burgess Shale contain?

5. Who was America's "greatest paleontologist and scientific administrator"?

(see the answer keys)

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