Ocean 115 - Introduction to Oceanography » Spring 2022 » Gould paper

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Question #1
Is the history of life necessarily progressive?
A.   Yes
B.   No
Question #2
Gould argues that humans arose because of what?
A.   A clear ability of mammals to outthink all non-mammals on the planet
B.   A clear pathway from lower life forms to higher life forms
C.   A fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events
D.   A victory of higher life forms over lower life forms
Question #3
What are the oldest unaltered rocks?
A.   47 billion years
B.   1 billion years
C.   4.6 billion years
D.   3.5 billion years
E.   2 billion years
Question #4
What did McShea and Boyajian separately discover?
A.   That evolution favors more complex body parts as a group develops
B.   That whales are the closest mammal group to humans
C.   That animals evolve but plants do not
D.   That plants evolve but animals do not
E.   That there is no evolutionary tendency to favor complexity
Question #5
How long was life strictly unicellular?
A.   5/8 of Earth’s history
B.   5/6 of Earth’s history
C.   2/5 of Earth’s history
D.   1/6 of Earth’s history
E.   1/4 of Earth’s history
Question #6
What happened during the Cambrian explosion?
A.   A large asteroid hit the planet
B.   The appearance of all but one of  the animal phyla in the fossil record
C.   A massive volcanic eruption the size of the Yellowstone volcano
D.   The appearance of ½ of the animal phyla in the fossil record
Question #7
How many mass extinctions have occurred in life’s history?
A.   3
B.   5
C.   17
D.   7
E.   1
Question #8
Why did diatoms survive the end Cretaceous mass extinction better than coccoliths?
A.   They have shells
B.   They have a dormancy stage
C.   They can hold their breath longer than other plankton
D.   They are deeper divers than other plankton
Question #9
What did Freud observe?
A.   That scientific revolutions require multiple scientists to work together for them to succeed
B.   That scientific revolutions require a great mind to work in isolation
C.   That great revolutions in science always knock human arrogance off one pedestal after another
D.   That fish have the same ability to dream as people
Question #10
When do the teleosts originate and rise to dominance?
A.   During the time of dinosaurs
B.   During the Cambrian Explosion
C.   During the time land animals first developed
D.   During the same time modern humans developed
Question #11
Why is this important for Gould’s argument?
A.   It shows that primates are the last successful group to develop so they need to be at the end of all sequences
B.   It shows that fish share a large number of traits with birds
C.   It shows that fish are the ancestors of humans
D.   It shows that many successful groups continue to arise after primates so it is strange to put humans at the end of all sequences

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