Earth History and Global Change
GEOL-1122 Spring 2014
Practice for Lecture Test #1
"Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future and
time future contained in time past" (T.S. Elliot)
Name_______________________________
Part I ‑ Multiple Choice (50 pts. ‑ 2 pts. each question).
**Circle the letter of the correct answer.
1) How do animals other than humans perceive the past and future?
a) They can only remember or visualize 5 to 6 days in either direction.
b) Many can understand the past and future in a similar way as humans.
c) They live in a timeless present without an understanding of the future or past.
d) They perceive a circular past and future, where all events are repeated.
2) The invention of accurate and affordable time-keeping devices resulted in:
a) More structured human social behavior
b) Better historical records
c) Increased human intelligence
d) Discovery of earth’s axial rotation
3) The idea of circular time was proposed and taught by which group?
a) Ancient Greeks and Mayans
b) Early Christian leaders
c) Earliest time travelers
d) All of the above
4) The highly cratered surface of the moon records a much older geologic history than the Earth's surface because:
a) The moon is much older than the Earth.
b) Meteorites, even the large ones, cannot pass through the Earth's atmosphere.
c) The gravitational pull of the moon is much greater than the Earth's gravitational field, resulting in a greater number of meteorite impacts on the moon.
d) The Earth's weathering and tectonic processes have removed most of the older impact craters and changed the surface over time.
5) Which of the following statements concerning unconformities is correct?
a) They always represent a break in the geologic record.
b) They are usually laterally extensive. (i.e. They occur over a large area.)
c) Sedimentary rocks are not always found on both sides of the unconformity surface.
d) All of the above
6) Widespread unconformities that are found on multiple continents are most commonly formed by:
a) Global changes in sea level
b) Widespread global volcanism
c) Plate tectonic collisions
d) All of the above
7) Isotopes of the same element are atoms with:
a) Same atomic mass but different atomic number
b) Same number of electrons
c) Same number of neutrons but different number of protons
d) Same number of protons but different number of neutrons
8) Which of the following occurs during alpha decay.
a) A neutron is converted to a proton as a negative charge is lost from the nucleus.
b) A proton is converted to a neutron as an electron is pulled into the nucleus.
c) A particle consisting of two protons and two neutrons is ejected from the nucleus.
d) An electron is lost from the outer shell of the atom.
9) Which of the following principles of stratigraphy is most commonly used to determine the relative ages of layered sedimentary rocks?
a) Law of Succession
b) Superposition
c) Law of Inclusions
d) Law of Cross-Cutting Relationships
10) Which of the following materials is commonly used in radiometric age dating?
a) Igneous rocks
b) High-grade metamorphic rocks
c) Organic material
d) All of the above
11) How much daughter material of an isotope would be present if 3 half lives had passed?
a) 6.25%
b) 12.5%
c) 75%
d) 87.5%
e) 93.75%
12) Which of the following is the best age estimate for a rock that contains an isotope with a half-life of 1.1 million years and only 6.25% of the parent material is present?
a) 3.3 million years old
b) 4.4 million years old
c) 5.5 million years old
d) 6.6 million years old
13) Subdivisions of geologic time such as the Pennsylvanian that are based on groups of rocks that represent a major geologic event are called:
a) Epochs
b) Eras
c) Eons
d) Periods
14) Which of the following information can be derived from the fossil record?
a) Ancient environmental conditions
b) Relative age data
c) Records of evolutionary change
d) All of the above
15) Which of the following is a biasing factor that causes the fossil record to show a greater increase in diversity towards the recent than actually occurred?
a) Increase in the rock record with increasing age
b) Selective preservation of only limited living materials
c) Sampling problems that result in a much greater amount of published research on the older and more deeply buried fossils.
d) All of the above
16) Which of the following is an example of permineralization?
a) A mold of a snail shell
b) Petrified wood
c) A carbon film and imprint of a leaf in a mudstone
d) All of the above
17) Which of the following would increase the number of mutations in a population?
a) Exposure to radiation
b) Changes in food supplies
c) Sexual reproduction in the daylight
d) All of the above
18) Which of the following is a group of animals that display a well-preserved transition in the fossil record relative to leg length and foot structure?
a) Horses
b) Beavers
c) Alligators
d) All of the above
19) Which of the following statements concerning fossil assemblages is correct?
a) They are groups of index fossils that better constrain rock ages.
b) They are the complete fossilized remains of an extinct organism.
c) They are multiple samples of the same fossil organism in a single rock unit.
d) They are the finger and toe bones of large fossilized organisms.
20) Which of the following is based on biblical interpretations?
a) The Spontaneous Generation Theory
b) The Theory of Creationism
c) A young (~6000 year old) age for the Earth
d) All of the above
21) Which of the following mechanisms was proposed by Lamarck to explain Transformism?
a) Genetics
b) Survival of the Fittest
c) Artificial Selection
d) Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics
22) Recessive genetic traits can be seen in the offspring of a breeding pair that both display the dominant trait only if:
a) Each parent carries at least one gene for the recessive trait.
b) One parent carries both genes for the recessive trait.
c) At least one parent carries a gene for the recessive trait.
d) A mutation occurs
23) Which of the following is an example of convergent evolution?
a) Bats, birds and butterflies
b) Whales, humans and bats
c) Dogs, cows and alligators
d) Fish, birds and alligators
24) Which of the following is used as modern evidence in support of evolution?
a) Observed examples of spontaneous generation
b) Observed examples of industrial melanism
c) Observed examples of behavioral changes in certain species
d) Observed examples of punctuated equilibrium
25) Which of the following are the two most important sources of variation within a population?
a) Reproductive behavior and transgender changes
b) Behavioral variation and geographic isolation
c) Genetic recombination and mutations
d) Acquired characteristics and environmental changes
Part II ‑ Fill in the Blank (50 pts. ‑ 2 pts. each question)
26) Explain why the early estimates of Earth’s age based on geologic processes produced ages that were more variable and younger than modern radiometric techniques.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
27) The Law of Fossil Succession allows geologists to use fossils in the correlation and relative age dating of rock units in the substudy of stratigraphy called ________________.
28-29) List the four most important characteristics of an index or guide fossil.
a) _______________________________________
b) _______________________________________
c) _______________________________________
d) _______________________________________
30) A type of unconformity where flat-lying sedimentary rocks are found on top of much older igneous or metamorphic rocks is called a/an _____________________________.
31) A type of radioactive decay in which an electron is pulled into and joined with a proton in the nucleus is called _______________ decay.
32) What is the proposed age for the Earth that is based on the measured ages of moon rocks and meteorites? (Give units - years/millions of years/etc.) ___________________
33) Describe how tree can be used to determine absolute dates up to ~14000 years. (Not Carbon-14) _______________________________________________________
34) The basic stratigraphic mappable unit that occurs over a large area and has distinct upper and lower boundaries is called the ____________________.
35) What is the age of a lava flow that has an isotope with a half-life of 1.5 million years, parent material = 3.125% and daughter material = 96.875%? _____________ (list units)
36) How old is a rock if it contains 87.5% daughter material of an isotope with a half-life of 3 million years? _______________________ (list units)
37) The geologic era which marks the period of middle life forms (when land plants and reptiles became abundant on the Earth) was the ______________________ Era.
38) The geologic era which marks the period of recent life forms (especially mammals) is the _________________ Era.
39) In contrast to Natural Selection, __________________ selection is the process where humans select characteristics of plants and animals that will be passed on to future generations.
40-41) _________________ is an example of a vestigial structure in humans, while ____________________ is a vestigial structure in whales.
42) _______________________ is the process of a new species appearing from an ancestral species.
43) The total disappearance of all living members of a species is called _______________.
44-45) Define and give an example of analogous structures. _______________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
46-47) Slow and systematic evolutionary change as predicted by the theory of evolution is called _____________________________. In contrast, rapid evolutionary change driven by major changes in the environment is called __________________________.
48) ___________________________ is the study of the distribution of ancient life forms.
49-50) List the four major observations that Darwin used in developing the theory of Natural Selection:
a) ____________________________________________________________________
b) ____________________________________________________________________
c) ____________________________________________________________________
d) ____________________________________________________________________
Extra Credit (2 points): What was the name of the ship that Darwin sailed on during his 1831-1836 voyage that led to his development of the Theory of Natural Selection?
___________________________________ (Hint: It was a type of dog.)