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

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

3. In Gould's perspective, what historical understanding does the Burgess shale offer humanity?
(a) The idea of "contingency."
(b) The idea of "plague."
(c) The idea of "symbiosis."
(d) The idea of "necrogenesis."

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

5. What kind of development were the Burgess animals first interpreted to have?
(a) Regressing development.
(b) Gradual, progressive development.
(c) Quick, rash development.
(d) Unchanging development.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what year did Leif Størmer describe the Burgess Shale arthropods in a treatise?

2. When does the old story have Walcott miraculously stumble upon the Burgess Shale?

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

4. What was Leif Størmer's treatise on the Burgess Shale named?

5. Why did Whittington dissect Opabinia?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did using these new methods allow Whittington's team to do?

2. What did Whittington find Opabinia to actually be?

3. What is the definition of decimation in the relation to the evolution of life?

4. What evidence favors Opabinia's uniqueness?

5. Name four levels of the taxonomy of life.

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

7. Why did Gould write this book as an homage to the Burgess Shale?

8. What did Leif Størmer's "Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology" describe?

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

10. What are Marrella and Yohoia in terms of evolution?

(see the answer keys)

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