PCB 4674: EVOLUTION EXAM 1
Questions & Answers
All living organisms on Earth are related through - ANSWERSCommon Ancestry
Five-year voyage around the world. This ship sailed from England, around the tip of
South America, to the Galápagos Islands, around the southern coast of Australia and
Africa, and back to England. During this journey, Darwin collected thousands of
samples: plants, animals, fossils, and rocks. He made careful and important
observations about the organisms he encountered. - ANSWERSHMS Beagle
Darwin surmised that birds with certain physical features, those that allowed them to eat
certain foods in their environment, survived and reproduced. Through reproduction, they
could pass on these physical features to their offspring, thus increasing the frequency of
these features in the overall population of birds. In different environments, different
physical features would be favored and would be "selected." - ANSWERSNatural
Selection
Driver of evolution called natural selection. Darwin refereed to it as -
ANSWERSDescent With Modification
The 13 different finch species that currently live on the Galápagos is a kind of rapid and
prolific speciation known as an _______ _______. An evolutionary pattern in which
many species evolve from a single ancestral species. - ANSWERSAdaptive Radiation
Common scientific views before Darwin - ANSWERSThe earth is young, species
divinely created, and species are unchangable
Emerging scientific views before Darwin - ANSWERSThe earth is old, the earth's
surface, plants, and anaimals havechanged over time
Study of Earth - ANSWERSGeology
Study of Fossils - ANSWERSPalentology
Study of classification and relationships of organisms - ANSWERSTaxonomy &
Systematics
Study of populations - ANSWERSDemography
Study of organisms and their changes over time - ANSWERSEvolutionary biology
How old is the earth - ANSWERS4.6 Billion Years
,Scottish geologist who lived in the 18th century and who recognized that wind and rain
caused erosion and formed sand, small rocks, and soil. Discovered the strata and
uniformitarianism. - ANSWERSJames Hutton
Particles could then be redeposited and form the layered pattern of rock we call -
ANSWERSStrata
Hutton's ideas of geological strata and time depth rely on the assumption that the
processes that occur today are the same ones that have occurred in the past. This is
known as ____________, an idea that is widely accepted in all scientific fields today. -
ANSWERSUniformitarianism
Hutton's ideas were soon tested by the great geologist _______ ______ , who
confirmed that it would take millions, not thousands, of years for Earth's geological
strata to form. Who lived in the late 18th, early 19th centuries. - ANSWERSCharles Lyell
He invented the microscope and examined fossil wood under his new device. He noted
that the cellular structure of the fossil wood was the same as the wood that exists today.
He lived in the 17th century. - ANSWERSRobert Hooke
He proposed that fossils were from organisms that no longer existed. He also
discovered that different fossils could be found in different geological strata. He also
proposed that different layers of strata represent groups of organisms that had been
wiped out in a series of catastrophic events. He lived in the 18th/19th century. -
ANSWERSGeorges Cuvier
Cuvier proposed evolution happened catastrophically, others proposed it happened
slowly and gradually. Although many lineage extinctions are not dramatic, there is
growing evidence that there have been ______ _______ events. - ANSWERSMass
Extinction
One mass extinction event happened 65 million years ago; it marks the end of the
dinosaurs and the beginning of the reign of ______. - ANSWERSMammals
In 1991, researchers discovered a massive crater, partially underwater, on the
________ _____________ in modern-day Mexico. It has been dated to about 65 million
years and preserves a high concentration of iridium, an element that is exceptionally
rare on Earth but common in meteors and comets. A comet or meteor, roughly 6 miles
wide, struck Earth 65 million years ago, with the force of 100 million megatons. To put
this in perspective, the current arsenal of nuclear weapons stockpiled by the United
States military is 1,400 megatons. This means we would need to set off our entire
nuclear arsenal 70,000 times in a row to equal the force of this impact. This was a
catastrophic event; it is remarkable that anything survived. - ANSWERSYucatán
Peninsula
, Prior to Cuvier's work on fossils, the great Swedish naturalist ________ ________
devised a system for naming and classifying all living organisms. His system is still used
today, and allows scientists from all over the world, speaking different languages, to
understand one another. Lived in 18th century. He proposed that each species should
receive a unique name composed of a genus and a species. - ANSWERSCarolus
Linnaeus
Genus/Species of Humans, Chimpanzees, Boa constrictor, and Gorilla: -
ANSWERSHomo sapiens, Pan troglodytes, Boa constrictor, Gorilla, gorilla
Linnaeus also devised a ___________ __________ scheme in which all living
organisms could be placed within a kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and,
finally, species. The Linnaean system of classification reveals that living organisms,
including humans, are clustered in distinct ways- ways that could only be explained if
these living organisms shared a common ancestor. - ANSWERSHierarchical
Classification
Humans are the only living species in the genus - ANSWERSHomo
We are members of the family ________ and the superfamily hominoidea. However, we
are not alone in this superfamily. Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons are
also in the superfamily hominoidea. They are in this superfamily because they share
features with us like large brains, mobile shoulders, and an upright posture. These other
animals reside in our superfamily because we share a common ancestor with them. -
ANSWERSHominidae
Thomas Malthus, an economist, wrote An Essay on the __________ ___ _________, a
book that laid the foundation for many of Darwin's ideas. Malthus observed that humans
often have more than two offspring. If parents (two people) continued to have more than
two children, then the population of humans would grow. In fact, Malthus argued that
the growth could be exponential, resulting in billions and billions of humans in a short
period of time. - ANSWERSPrinciple of Population
Malthus stated that populations are limited by their resources. Therefore, there is a
_________ ___ ______, with only certain individuals surviving and reproducing. Notice
how this observation by Malthus, combined with Darwin's recognition that there is
considerable variation in a population, forms the basis for natural selection. -
ANSWERSStruggle For Existence
The idea that living organisms have changed over time was already around by the time
Darwin came along. Most notably, the French scientist ________ ____________
_________ argued that plants and animals had changed over time, or evolved. He
proposed the mechanism of evolution known as "Inheritance of Acquired
Characteristics" his mechanism was wrong! - ANSWERSJean-Baptiste Lamarck
