Campbell Biology: Concepts and Connections, 8e (Reece et al.)
Chapter 15 Tracing Evolutionary History
15.1 Multiple-Choice Questions
1) The “big bang” that produced the universe is thought to have occurred
A) 40 to 50 billion years ago.
B) 12 to 14 billion years ago.
C) 4.6 billion years ago.
D) 4 million years ago.
2) The earliest discovered fossils are of ________ dating back to ________ years ago.
A) single-celled eukaryotes; 4.5 billion
B) prokaryotes; 3.5 billion
C) algae; 1 billion
D) fish; 600 million
3) The findings of Pasteur and others have established that
A) living organisms regularly self-assemble (arise spontaneously) from nonliving matter.
B) living organisms do not arise from nonliving matter today, nor did they arise from nonlife in
the past.
C) advanced organisms cannot arise from nonliving matter, but simple microbial life often does
arise from nonlife today.
D) life does not arise from nonliving matter today, but in the conditions of early Earth, such an
event could have occurred.
4) Miller was the first to show that
A) amino acids and other organic molecules could have formed under conditions thought to
resemble those of early Earth.
B) the earliest forms of life were photosynthetic.
C) eukaryotic life evolved from early prokaryotes.
D) the earliest forms of life had an RNA genome.
5) Which highly reactive gas was probably absent from the Earth’s primitive atmosphere?
A) methane
B) carbon dioxide
C) O2 (oxygen gas)
D) water vapor
6) What was the probable role of oxygen gas in the early stages of life’s appearance on Earth?
A) Cellular respiration, which depends on oxygen availability, provided abundant energy to the
first life-forms.
B) Oxygen promoted the formation of complex organic molecules through physical processes.
C) Oxygen gas tends to disrupt organic molecules, so its absence promoted the formation and
stability of complex organic molecules on the early Earth.
D) Abundant atmospheric oxygen would have created an ozone layer, which blocked out
ultraviolet light and thereby protected the earliest life-forms.
7) Miller-type experiments have shown that
A) simple cells could be produced in the laboratory using a “soup” of small organic molecules.
B) complex organic molecules can be produced by physical processes from inorganic
components.
C) living cells could survive in primitive Earth’s atmosphere.
D) given the conditions of early Earth, the formation of life would still require additional
materials from meteorites and asteroids.
8) Which of the following environments is thought to have promoted the dehydration synthesis
of polypeptides and other macromolecules from smaller organic monomers on a prebiotic Earth?
A) freshwater swamps and marshes
B) deep-sea hydrothermal vents
C) hot sand, clay, or rock along the seashore
D) sediments at the bottom of the world’s oceans
9) A current leading hypothesis about the first system of inheritance in the earliest life-forms
involves
A) self-replicating DNA molecules (the “DNA world” hypothesis).
B) self-replicating RNA molecules aided by ribozymes.
C) proteins that served as templates for RNA molecules, leading to the formation of DNA.
D) self-replicating polypeptides aided by ribosomes.
10) Some RNA molecules can function like enzymes. These particular enzymatic RNA
molecules are called
A) ribosomes.
B) mRNA.
C) ribozymes.
D) RNase.
11) Which of the following options lists major events in the history of life on Earth in the proper
order, from earliest to most recent?
A) first prokaryotes, photosynthesis, colonization of land by plants and fungi, first eukaryotes
B) first eukaryotes, photosynthesis, colonization of land by plants and fungi, first prokaryotes
C) first prokaryotes, first eukaryotes, photosynthesis, colonization of land by plants and fungi
D) first prokaryotes, photosynthesis, first eukaryotes, colonization of land by plants and fungi
12) Plants and fungi first became established on land during the
A) Archaean.
B) Proterozoic.
C) Paleozoic.
D) Cenozoic.
13) If all of Earth’s history were compressed into an hour, humans would first appear less than
A) 1 second ago.
B) 10 seconds ago.
C) 1 minute ago.
D) 10 minutes ago.
14) The technique called radiometric dating is based on
A) the steady, clocklike decay of certain radioactive isotopes over time.
B) the assumption that radioactive isotopes accumulate in fossils at a constant rate.
C) the formation of radioactive molecules in rocks after they are laid down.
D) the use of fossils of known age to determine how fast carbon-14 decays.
15) The 14C:12C ratio can be used to date fossils that are up to approximately how old?
A) 100 million years
B) 7 million years
C) 75,000 years
D) 7,500 years
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16) You find the frozen remains of a woolly mammoth in an Alaskan glacier. You analyze a bit
of the tusk and find that its 14C:12C ratio is about one-fourth (25%) of the baseline level
typically found in living organisms. Given that the half-life of 14C is 5,730 years, when did the
mammoth die?
A) 5,730 years ago
B) almost 12,000 years ago
C) at least 25,000 years ago
D) approximately 75,000 years ago
17) If an isotope has a half-life of 4 million years, and a fossil is 16 million years old, how much
of the original isotope will be found in the fossil?
A) one-half of the original amount
B) one-quarter of the original amount
C) one-eighth of the original amount
D) one-sixteenth of the original amount
18) Potassium-40 can be used to date ________ that are ________ old.
A) fossils; thousands of years
B) volcanic rocks and associated fossils; hundreds of millions of years
C) potassium-rich fossils; millions of years
D) carbon-containing materials; up to 75,000 years
19) The Mesozoic era is often called the age of reptiles. Which of the following also occurred
during this era?
A) the origin of animals in the oceans
B) the appearance of the first plants on land
C) the appearance of the first animals (tetrapods and insects) on land
D) the appearance of the first mammals and flowering plants on land
20) The earliest known land plants date to the
A) Precambrian.
B) Ordovician (early Paleozoic era).
C) Carboniferous (late Paleozoic era).
D) Jurassic (Mesozoic era).
21) Which of the following options correctly lists the varieties of life in the order that they
appear in the geologic record, from earliest to most recent?
A) reptiles, land arthropods, plants and fungi on land, flowering plants
B) land arthropods, plants and fungi on land, flowering plants, reptiles
C) plants and fungi on land, land arthropods, reptiles, flowering plants
D) plants and fungi on land, land arthropods, flowering plants, reptiles
22) The earliest known flowering plants date to the
A) Paleozoic.
B) Triassic (early Mesozoic era).
C) Cretaceous (late Mesozoic era).
D) Cenozoic.
23) Geologists have evidence that over the past 1.5 billion years,
A) Earth’s continents have remained essentially in their current shape and positions.
B) Earth’s landmasses have joined into a single continent and split back apart again on three
occasions.
C) Earth’s landmasses have moved about extensively but have remained separate.
D) Earth’s landmasses have been entirely submerged in water on three occasions.
24) Earth’s continents and seafloors together form a thin outer layer of the planet called the
A) crust.
B) strata.
C) biosphere.
D) Pangean supercontinent.
25) How is the merging of continents to form Pangaea believed to have altered Earth’s
environments at the end of the Paleozoic era?
A) It eliminated all multicellular eukaryotes, allowing evolution to start anew.
B) Shallow coastal areas were drained, leading to the extinction of many marine species.
C) It made the climate warmer and moister for terrestrial organisms in the center of the new
landmass.
D) It prompted an immediate increase in Earth’s biodiversity.
26) It is estimated that the modern continents began to take shape
A) 1.3 million years ago.
B) 650 million years ago.
C) 65 million years ago.
D) 6,000 years ago.
27) The Himalayas are an example of a mountain range that formed as a result of
A) the collision of two continental plates.
B) the separation of two continental plates.
C) the buildup of sediments and conversion to rock.
D) volcanic eruptions.
28) Which of the following lines of evidence suggests that lungfishes evolved while Pangaea was
intact?
A) Modern lungfishes on different continents show similar patterns of behavior.
B) Lungfishes are found today in Africa, Australia, and South America.
C) Fossil lungfishes have been found on every continent except Antarctica.
D) Lungfishes are restricted to Australia and neighboring islands.
29) Geological evidence indicates that two landmasses became separated by a deep ocean
channel 45 million years ago and have been moving apart ever since. You are studying a group
of organisms that is widespread as a native part of the biota on both of the landmasses. What can
you conclude about the group’s evolutionary history?
A) The group’s ancestors were definitely present on the original landmass.
B) The group’s ancestors cannot have been present on the original landmass.
C) If the group’s ancestors could not move across the open ocean, it is very likely that they were
present on the original landmass.
D) The group’s ancestors must have independently colonized each of the landmasses from a third
location within the past 45 million years.
30) A spot where two continental plates are sliding past one another may be prone to
A) volcanoes.
B) earthquakes.
C) tsunamis.
D) wildfires.
31) Over the past 500 million years, there have been ________ mass extinctions, and each time,
at least ________ of the species on Earth became extinct.
A) two; 25%
B) five; 25%
C) five; 50%
D) twelve; 96%
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32) At the end of the ________, over 96% of marine species and many terrestrial species became
extinct, possibly because intense volcanic activity warmed Earth’s climate.
A) Precambrian
B) Permian
C) Cretaceous
D) Mesozoic
33) One of the strongest lines of evidence of a meteor or comet impact in the late Cretaceous is
A) the extinction of the dinosaurs.
B) a thin layer of potassium-40 in late Cretaceous fossil strata.
C) a thin layer of iridium-enriched clay in late Cretaceous fossil strata.
D) the warming of Earth’s climate in the late Cretaceous.
34) Scientists evaluating the Cretaceous mass extinction have concluded that
A) an asteroid impact was probably the triggering event for the extinction.
B) only an extraterrestrial impact could have caused such a big extinction event.
C) climate change would not have been involved in producing the extinctions.
D) ecological factors such as disease and competition probably caused the dinosaurs to go
extinct.
35) Mass extinctions
A) remove many species, but they are usually replaced within a million years or less by an even
greater diversity of life.
B) mainly serve to “weed out” poorly adapted organisms and make room for new, better adapted
species.
C) remove well-adapted species and groups from the Earth, so that it may take millions of years
for species diversity to recover.
D) are caused by human activity and did not occur prior to the expansion of the Earth’s human
population.
36) Over the past 400 years, humans have documented the extinction of more than ________
species. This modern rate of species extinction is estimated to be ________ the normal extinction
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rate seen in the fossil record.
A) 100; about the same as
B) 400; about double
C) 1,000; over 100 times greater than
D) 10,000; at least 1 million times greater than
37) Scientists believe that a major factor promoting the adaptive radiation of mammals was
probably
A) their development of fur.
B) the mass extinction of most dinosaurs, an event that opened up new ecological opportunities.
C) internal fertilization.
D) the origin and diversification of flowering plants.
38) How can the success of one group of organisms promote the adaptive radiation of a second
group?
A) by providing new food resources, habitats, etc. for the second group
B) by competing with the second group, promoting its adaptive radiation
C) by preying on the second group, which hastens its adaptation
D) by filling most of the available niches, which forces the second group to evolve greater
diversity
39) According to “evo-devo” thinking, an organism’s body form can be substantially changed
A) only through multiple mutations that produce a large number of new proteins.
B) through mutations that change sexually selected traits.
C) only when changes in the environment directly alter the major protein-coding genes in the
organism’s genome.
D) through mutations or changes in the expression of one or a few genes that regulate
development.
40) In the axolotl, development is altered. Adult axolotls retain features (external gills and
aquatic life) that were juvenile in its ancestors, a phenomenon known as
A) “evo-devo.”
B) paedomorphosis.
C) punctuated evolution.
D) homology.
41) The example of ocean and lake stickleback fishes indicates that morphology can be altered
A) only by changing the sequences of protein-coding genes.
B) by altering the expression of a developmental gene in some parts of the body but not others.
C) by environmental factors (in this case, pollution).
D) by the elimination of a gene (Pitx1) from a population, which leads to loss of the trait (body
armor and spines).
42) Anti-evolutionary thinkers sometimes argue that natural selection could not produce a
complex structure like the vertebrate eye. They claim that all of the parts of the eye must have
arisen at once, asking why natural selection would favor the development of part of an eye that is
not yet capable of forming a focused image. Which of the following statements is consistent with
a survey of eye structure in the molluscs?
A) The argument has a great deal of merit. Only full-blown image-forming eyes are present in
modern organisms.
B) There are many intermediate stages of eye complexity that fulfill different adaptive functions.
C) The vertebrate eye is the ancestral form, and other types of organisms have degenerate eyes
that have lost most of their original structure and function.
D) The vertebrate eye works in a way that is completely different from the eyes found in
molluscs and other invertebrates.
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43) Feathers are an example of a/an ________; they originally evolved ________.
A) homology; for flight
B) adaptation; for some other function and only later became adapted for flight
C) exaptation; in anticipation of future use in the development of flight
D) exaptation; for some other function and only later became adapted for flight
44) Over a span of several thousand years, a number of species show adaptations to climate
change: Drier, warmer conditions select for succulent vegetation and deep taproots in plants,
burrowing in mammals and amphibians, and other similar adaptive changes. What will happen if
the climate shifts in the opposite direction and becomes progressively wetter and cooler?
A) Ongoing processes of adaptation will continue because of evolutionary inertia.
B) Different adaptive trends will probably be favored in the new climatic environment.
C) Current adaptive trends will continue, but organisms will now also have to add on adaptations
to deal with cool, wet conditions.
D) Adaptation will cease because cool, wet conditions are generally favorable for life.
45) The model of species selection is analogous to natural selection. In this analogy, ________
are like individuals within a population, and ________ is analogous to reproduction.
A) major groups of organisms; extinction
B) species; speciation
C) genes; gene duplication
D) families; interbreeding
46) Structures that evolved from the same structure in a common ancestor are
A) homologous.
B) heterologous.
C) analogous.
D) convergent adaptations.
47) The process through which species not closely related may come to resemble one another if
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they live in a similar environment is known as
A) coevolution.
B) homology.
C) convergent evolution.
D) paedomorphosis.
48) Cave-dwelling catfish and cave-dwelling salamanders share striking similarities: Both
organisms lack pigmentation, and their eyes are reduced or absent. The most recent common
ancestor to these organisms had normal pigmentation and fully developed eyes. The similarities
between cave catfish and cave salamanders are an example of
A) convergent homology.
B) analogy (convergent evolution).
C) homology.
D) exaptation.
49) The similarities in function of hummingbird wings and the wings of a butterfly reflect
A) homology but not analogy.
B) homology through convergent evolution.
C) analogy and homology.
D) analogy but not homology.
50) Ever since Darwin, systematics has tried to
A) organize species into groups based on logical categories.
B) classify species in groups that reflect evolutionary relationships.
C) prove the existence of evolution using laboratory experiments.
D) keep classification and naming as a practical science, separate from controversies involving
evolution.
51) Which of the following options lists taxonomic categories in the correct order from most
specific to most general?