TEST EARTH PART A – EVOLUTION OF EARTH
1. C
2. D
3. B
4. A
5. A
6. B
7. C
8. D
9. A
10. X
11. ABCXDZ
12. ACDB
13. A
14. C
15. C
16. C
17. C
18. C
19. A
20. E
21. D
22. A
23. C
24. A
25. C
26. B
27. A
28. B
29. D
30. BACD
31. A
32. A
33. C
34. B
35. A
36. B
37. C
38. C
39. A
40. A
BONUS
DACB
TEST EARTH PART A – EVOLUTION OF EARTH
1. Earth is
a. 13.7 billion years old.
b. 6000-7000 years old.
c. 4.6 billion years old.
d. 3.5 million years old.
2. Which of the following was NOT a part of very early Earth?
a. methane in the atmosphere
b. lava flows and earthquakes
c. high temperatures
d. more oxygen than we now have
3. What was produced by Miller and Urey’s experiment shown below?
a.
b.
c.
d.
living bacteria
organic compounds like amino acids
duplicate atmosphere to early earth
tiny unidentified organisms
4. What can scientists learn from ice cores?
a. information about ancient climates
b. information about plate tectonics
c. information about continuous mountain ranges
d. information about the favorite flavors of popsicles
5. Uniformitarianism is a belief that
a. forces and processes seen today have been going on for a very long time.
b. all continental plates move in the same basic direction.
c. new forces like volcanoes and earthquakes did not occur on early Earth.
d. all species have developed their own uniforms
6. The Law of Superposition states that the layer on the bottom
a. is youngest.
b. is oldest.
c. is always metamorphic rock.
d. is always igneous rock.
7. When sediment is laid down on Earth’s surface it is laid down in a horizontal position. What do we call the
law that makes this statement?
a. Law of Superposition
b. Law of Cross-Cutting Relationships
c. Law of Horizontality
d. Law of Uniformitarianism
8. Which of the following is NOT a source of new sedimentary layers?
a. volcano eruptions
b. dust storms
c. floods
d. earthquakes
Z
D
C
B
A
X
9. Which of the layers above is oldest?
10. What happened first, the intrusion (X) or the earthquake (Z)?
11. Provide the sequence of events beginning with the oldest and ending with the youngest event.
12. Place the following events in the correct order to explain the creation of the illustrated land form below.
A. Deposition of sediment
B. Erosion by running water
C. Mountain building
D. Erosion by wind
13. The use of more than one location to piece together the history of a large region is
a. correlation of strata
b. cooperative strategy
c. Law of Horizontality
d. Law of Superposition
14. Which of the following is the correct sequence for the Geologic Time Scale from largest to smallest division?
a. Eon-era-epoch-period
b. Era-eon-epoch-period
c. Eon-era-period-epoch
d. Era-eon-period-epoch
15. What is the oldest known era?
a. Phanerozoic
b. Cambrian
c. Precambrian
d. Jurassic
16. Which of the following would be considered to be altered remains?
a. teeth
b. bones
c. petrified wood
d. frozen mammoth
17. Tracks, burrows, dung, and even stomach contents can become fossils. What type of fossils are they?
a. altered remains
b. unaltered remains
c. trace fossils
d. remains
18. What do we call the type of fossils that are dated in between the earliest fossil and the modern organism?
a. trace fossils
b. evolutionary fossils
c. transitional fossils
d. developmental fossils
19. Why don’t we find fossils of slugs?
a. they don’t have any hard parts
b. they moved too slow to be fossilized
c. they did not live in areas where fossilization occurred
d. they were buried too quickly
20. Which of the following would most likely be considered an index fossil?
21. How do scientists know that our continent was once cut in half by water?
a. they found salt in the layers beneath
b. they carbon dated the rocks
c. they found Tyrannosaurus bones
d. they found fish bones
22. Which of the following best describes the oldest known fossils?
a. large stacks of bacterial shells called stromatolites
b. dinosaur bones called helianthropus
c. carbon prints of ancient ocean algae
d. shells of trilobites
23. The method of using Carbon-14 to identify the exact age of a rock and its fossils is called
a. isotope dating
b. fossil dating
c. absolute dating
d. molecular dating
24. What happens to Carbon-14 when an organism dies?
a. it immediately begins to decay into Nitrogen-14
b. it decays into lead
c. it decays and then the bones turn into Nitrogen-14
d. it decays into Carbon-12
25. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5730 years. If a fossil is found to have only 23% carbon-14 in its remains, we
know that
a. it has been dead 25 years
b. it has been dead 25 x 5730 years
c. it has been dead longer than 5730 years
d. it has been dead less than 5730 years
26. A geologist is studying very ancient Earth samples. What type of element might he test for?
a. Carbon-14
b. Uranium-238
c. Hydrogen-1
d. Nitrogen percentages
27. What important hypothesis did Alfred Wegener develop?
a. continental drift (movement of continents)
b. plate tectonics (how plates move)
c. magnetic reversal (the effect of Earth’s magnetism on oceanic rock)
d. evolution of the Moon (how the Moon has changed over time)
28. What was the name given to the most recent supercontinent?
a. Gondwanna
b. Pangaea
c. Europea
d. Pluto
29. Which of the following is NOT evidence for continental drift?
a. continental puzzle (continents fit together like a puzzle)
b. continuous species (existing and fossil species match the puzzle)
c. continuous mountain ranges (ranges of mountains match the puzzle)
d. opposite climates (climates are opposite from continent to continent )
30. Paleomagnetism is evidence of continental drift. Place the following in the correct sequence of
paleomagnetic events.
A. Magnetic rocks lose their magnetism.
B. Magnetic rocks heat up to liquid.
C. Magnetic rocks realign parallel to the existing magnetic field.
D. Magnetic rocks cool down.
31. How do the Hawaiian Islands provide evidence of continental drift?
a. they are hotspot volcanic islands that erupt in a row over the hotspot as the plate moves.
b. they are tropical so provide evidence of continuous climates
c. they are located very far out in the Pacific Ocean away from other continents
d. they are always hot because they are all currently located over a hotspot
32. Magnetic reversals provide evidence of continental drift. They also provide evidence that
a. our Earth’s magnetic field has reversed many times in the past
b. the Earth’s magnetic field is weaker in the center of the Atlantic
c. paleontologists can detect opposite magnetic poles by analyzing rock samples
d. the magnetic North and South have always been like they are now
33. Where would you find the newest crust on Earth?
a. at the coasts of Africa and South America
b. at the center of the Pacific Ocean
c. along the mid-Atlantic Ridge
d. on the top of the tallest mountain peak
34. Earth is divided into huge plates of crust that move slowly around the Earth’s surface. What causes the
plates to move?
a. ocean waves
b. convection currents of churning magma
c. Earth vs. Moon’s gravity
d. Solar gravity
35. What do we call the bending up of rock along the mid-Atlantic ridge?
a. upwarping
b. rift valleys
c. slap pull
d. ridge push
36. What do we call a boundary where two plates are moving apart?
a. convergent boundary
b. divergent boundary
c. transform boundary
d. dividing boundary
37. California’s San Andreas fault is an example of a
a. convergent boundary
b. divergent boundary
c. transform boundary
d. dividing boundary
38. What type of boundary typically produces large mountain ranges like the Himalayas?
a. continent-ocean convergent boundary
b. ocean-ocean convergent boundary
c. continent-continent convergent boundary
d. ocean-ocean divergent boundary
39. At what type of boundary would you expect to find lots of volcanoes and earthquakes?
a. continent-ocean convergent boundary
b. ocean-ocean convergent boundary
c. continent-continent convergent boundary
d. ocean-ocean divergent boundary
40. What type of activity is found beneath a subduction zone?
a. slab pull
b. ridge push
c. magnetic reversal
d. cooling of magma
BONUS:
Put the following in the correct order from largest to smallest division on the Geologic time scale for today:
A.
B.
C.
D.
Cenozoic
Holocene
Quaternary
Phanerozoic