CHAPTER 17 Test Your Knowledge

Driving Question 1

By answering the questions below and studying Infographics 17.1, 17.2, and 17.3, you should be able to generate an answer for the broader Driving Question above.

KNOW IT

What do uranium-238, carbon-14, and potassium-40 have in common?

To date what you suspect to be the very earliest life on Earth, which isotope would you use: uranium-238, carbon-14, or potassium-40? Explain your answer.

Place the following evolutionary milestones in order from earliest (1) to most recent (7), providing approximate dates to support your answer.
_________ The first multicellular eukaryotes

_________ The first prokaryotes

_________ The Permian extinction

_________ The Cambrian explosion

_________ The first animals

_________ The extinction of dinosaurs

_________ An increase in oxygen in the atmosphere

USE IT

Consider a rock formed at about the same time as Earth was formed.

a. How old is this rock?

b. How much of the original uranium-238 is likely to be left today in that rock?

Diverse animal fossils are found dating from the Cambrian Period, not earlier. Why might these organisms have made their first appearance in the fossil record only then, even though their ancestors may have been living, and evolving, for a long time before the Cambrian? (Think about what kinds of new structures might have evolved during the Cambrian Period that would have allowed these organisms to leave fossils.)

Driving Question 2

By answering the questions below and studying Infographic 17.4, you should be able to generate an answer for the broader Driving Question above.

KNOW IT

If two organisms strongly resemble each other in their physical traits, can you necessarily conclude that they are closely related? Explain your answer.

What did the arrangement of landmasses on Earth look like between 135 and 65 million years ago? What happened to these landmasses, and how does this change help explain the distribution of organisms found on the planet?

USE IT

A cactus called ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens), which grows in New Mexico, looks very much like Alluaudia procera, a species of plant that grows in the deserts of Madagascar. These two plant species are not closely related—they are in different orders in the kingdom Plantae. Why then do they look so alike?

If penguins and polar bears had evolved before Pangaea split into northern and southern continents, what might you predict about their geographic distribution today?

Both bats and insects fly, but bat wings have bones and insect wings do not. Would you consider bat and insect wings to be a result of convergent evolution, or of homology—evolution based on inheritance of similar structures from a common ancestor? Explain your answer.

Driving Question 3

By answering the questions below and studying Infographics 17.5, 17.6, 17.7, and 17.8, you should be able to generate an answer for the broader Driving Question above.

KNOW IT

Which of the following is not a domain of life?

a. Animalia

b. Eukarya

c. Bacteria

d. Archaea

e. Plantae

f. Neither a nor e is a domain of life.

Put the following terms in order from most inclusive (1) to least inclusive (5).

_________ Domain

_________ Species

_________ Kingdom

_________ Genus

_________ Phylum

A phylogenetic tree represents

a. a grouping of organisms on the basis of their shared structural features.

b. a grouping of organisms on the basis of their cell type.

c. a grouping of organisms on the basis of their complexity.

d. a grouping of organisms on the basis of their evolutionary history.

e. a grouping of organisms on the basis of where they are found.

USE IT

Why was the classification of the kingdom Monera split into two domains? What are these two domains?

On the tree below, which number represents the most recent common ancestor of humans and corn?

a. 1

b. 2

c. 3

d. 4

e. Humans and corn do not share any ancestors.