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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

3. What comprises the first 4 billion years of Earth's history?
(a) The Prestige Era.
(b) The Cambrian Era.
(c) The Precambrian Era.
(d) The Mesozoic Era.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What did Marella have that no trilobite shared?

2. What was Yohoia specialized for?

3. What does the Burgess Shale represent that occurred 570 million years ago?

4. How many specimens of Opabinia are in the Burgess Shale?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is the Burgess Shale acknowledged as the most significant collection of fossils yet discovered?

2. Name four levels of the taxonomy of life.

3. What special insight or perspective does the Burgess Shale offer?

4. What is the boundary between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras famous?

5. What did Whittington find Opabinia to actually be?

6. What sorts of new procedures did Whittington's team use?

7. Why did Whittington approach Yohoia less conservatively?

8. How did Whittington try to uncover the bodily appendages of Opabinia?

9. How is the "Cambrian explosion" defined?

10. What did Stephen Jay Gould desire to use the Burgess Shale for?

(see the answer keys)

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