Geology Final Test 3
During the Silurian, extensive barrier reefs developed in the: a) Michigan Basin; b) Gulf of Mexico; c) Atlantic Ocean; d) Taconic highlands; e) Caribbean Sea.
A
Late Paleozoic glaciations: a) occurred on Gondwanaland, b) were mostly mountain glaciers during the Ordovician in the Taconic highlands, c) probably had no effect on worldwide sea levels, d) affected all the continents simultaneously.
A
The Penokean Orogeny: a) was the result of a collision of an island arc with the Superior craton in what is now Minnesota, Wisconsin & Michigan; b) resulted in aggregation of the greenstone belts of northern Minnesota into a single large geologic terrane; c) was the first volcanic-igneous event in Minnesota's geologic history; d) was the first stage in development of the Proterozoic mid-continent rift system
A
The Proterozoic: a) is characterized by a change to a modern style of mountain building, b) represents the period of time between 4.6 and 2.5 billion years ago, c) lacked large continental masses, d) is known for the presence of greenstone belts separated by granulite terrains, e) marked the first appearance of trilobites.
A
Where would be a good place in North America to look for exposures of Precambrian-age rocks? a) Ontario, Canada; b) Florida; c) the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, d) California, e) all of the above
A
Which of the following groups of organisms are restricted to marine habitats of normal salinity? a) echinoderms; b) mollusks; c) amphibians; d) arthropods; e) bryozoans.
A
Which of the following might be considered to be a disadvantage of endothermy (warm-bloodedness): a) high food requirement; b) low food requirement; c) high level of activity; d) none of the above.
A
. Archean continents were: a) similar in size and composition to modern continents; b) small and relatively unstable; c) larger than modern continents—tectonics has since broken them into the modern continents; d) composed predominantly of basalt.
B
Archean life: a) probably evolved under relatively high concentrations of atmospheric oxygen, b) probably consisted mostly of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) and bacteria, c) was more diverse than Proterozoic life, d) included just a few species of coelenterates and arthropods.
B
Dinosaurs with this type of hip structure are classified as: a) Ornithischians; b) Saurischians; c) therapsids; d) birds; e) no dinosaurs have this hip structure.
B
During the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic, the eastern margin of North America: a) was dominated by normal continental shelf sedimentation, b) underwent a rifting episode related to the breakup of Pangea, c) was deformed by the final phases of the Alleghenian Orogeny, d) was typified by widespread swamps, leading to widespread and thick coal deposits.
B
Early and middle Mesozoic landscapes were dominated by: a) angiosperms (flowering plants); b) cycads and other gymnosperms; c) mosses; d) ferns and lycopods
B
In North America, a tropical, coal-producing swamp flora that was dominated by lycopods, sphenopsids, ferns, and seed ferns occurred during the: a) Silurian; b) Pennsylvanian; c) Cambrian; d) Proterozoic; e) Permian.
B
Nautiloid cephalopods: a) are the oldest group of shelled cephalopods; b) are extinct; c) evolved from the ammonoid cephalopods; d) had (have) only coiled shelled forms; e) all of the above
B
The Burgess shale, which is exposed in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, is important to geologists because it contains: a) oil; b) fossils of soft-bodied forms of life; c) fossils of the first swimming animals; d) the first trilobites, e) GOLD!!!!
B
The Paleozoic Era began approximately ______________ years before present? a) 35 million; b) 542 million; c) 2.5 billion; d) 65 million; e) 244 million.
B
The earliest forests are known from the: a) Pennsylvanian; b) Devonian: c) Proterozoic; d) Ordovician; e) Silurian.
B
The oldest evidence of life on Earth: a) is about 3.5 billion years old, b) is about 570 million years old, c) is dominated by fossils of planktic eukaryotic algae, d) is impressions of soft-body metazoans.
B
Which continent was not part of Gondwanaland? a) Antarctica; b) Europe; c) India; d) South America; e) Africa.
B
Which of the following groups of organisms reaches its maximum importance during the Mississippian Period: a) reptiles; b) crinoids and other stemmed echinoderms; c) trilobites; d) conifers.
B
Which of the following groups of organisms went extinct and the end of the Paleozoic? a) bivalves and gastropods; b) trilobites and rugosan corals; c) brachiopods and crinoids; d) reptiles and therapsids; e) all of the above.
B
Which of the following phyla has the simplest level of cellular organization?: a) Bryozoa (bryozoans), b) Porifera (sponges), c) Arthropoda (arthropods), d) Brachiopoda (brachiopods), e) Echinodermata.
B
A likely reason for the dramatic decline of stromatolites during the Phanerozoic is: a) the blue-green algae that form them went extinct at the end of the Cambrian, b) global change to electric lites, c) increased grazing upon stromatolites by burrowing and grazing animals, d) a general absence of marine habitats during the Phanerozoic.
C
Continental shields, such as the Canadian Shield, are dominantly composed of: a) relatively young rocks derived from oceanic ridges; b) horizontal sedimentary rock; c) very ancient and intensely deformed igneous and metamorphic rock; d) relatively young volcanics that formed in volcanic arcs.
C
Dinosaurs rise to dominance in the terrestrial faunas: a) immediately following the end-Permian extinction; b) in the Late Permian of South America; c) in the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods; d) only after mammals went extinct; e) dinosaurs never dominated terrestrial faunas.
C
Following the mass extinctions of the Late Devonian: a) land-dwelling faunas did not recover until the beginning of the Mesozoic; b) echinoderms, especially crinoids were never common again; c) the stromatoporoid-tabulate coral reef community never recovered its former importance; d) trilobites became more important than at any other time.
C
Subduction of oceanic crust along the western margin of North America during the Jurassic led to development of the: a) Ancestral Rocky Mountains; b) Cascade Mountains; c) Sierra Nevada; d) Sonoma Mountains; e) Antler Orogeny.
C
Tabulate corals are characterized by: a) their lack of a calcareous skeleton; b) prominent septa that have bilateral symmetry; c) colonial habit, prominent tabulae, and reduced septa; d) prominent septa that have 6-fold, radial symmetry.
C
The amphibians most likely evolved from which group of fishes: a) ostracoderms, b) sharks and rays, c) lobe-finned fishes, d) placoderms, e) ray-finned fishes.
C
The development of the amniote egg by the reptiles may have led to their domination of drier terrestrial settings because: a) they could lay more eggs at one time; b) their eggs made better omelets; c) they did not have to return to water to lay eggs; d) the eggs hatched faster; e) there were no predators to eat the eggs.
C
The oldest known tetrapods (four-legged animals) are ____________ in age: a) Pennsylvanian, b) Ordovician, c) Devonian, d) Silurian, e) Proterozoic.
C
Approximately what percentage of shallow marine species went extinct at the end of the Permian? a) 25%; b) 50; c) 75%; d) over 90%.
D
Archaeopteryx, the earliest confirmed bird: a) occupied a fully marine habitat in the Permian seas, b) lacked well developed feathers, and certainly couldn't fly, c) has most skeletal features diagnostic of modern birds, d) has such a dinosaur-like skeleton that it is referred to as a "feathered dinosaur".
D
Glaciation: a) is well documented throughout much of the Archean, b) almost always causes a rise in sea level during its maximum extent, c) has always been restricted to the polar or mountain regions, similar to glacial occurrences today, d) was very widespread, even into relatively low latitudes, during the Late Proterozoic.
D
In which of the following localities could you find basalts that were emplaced during the mid-Proterozoic, mid-continent rifting event: a) Black Hills of South Dakota; b) northern Scotland; c) northern Appalachian Mountains; d) north shore of Lake Superior; e) Baja California.
D
Reef communities of the middle Paleozoic were characterized by: a) lack of effective, frame-building organisms, b) complete domination by rugosan corals, c) domination by archeocyathans and calcareous algae, d) a wave-resistant framework of stromatoporoids and tabulate corals, e) abundant stromatolites.
D
The Cambrian deposits of North America: a) reflect the intense North American mountain-building events of the time, b) lack fossil evidence for animal life; c) indicate glaciation was nearly as widespread as during the Neoproterozoic, d) reflect persistent marine transgression throughout the Cambrian Period.
D
The Early Carboniferous Period of Europe is approximately equivalent to the ____________ Period of North America: a) Ordovician, b) Silurian, c) Devonian, d) Mississippian, e) Pennsylvanian.
D
The large, stable, interior region of a continent consisting of Precambrian-aged rocks is called a(n): a) orogenic belt; b) platform; c) structural province; d) craton
D
The main distinction between the Proterozoic Eon and the Cambrian Period is: a) fossils of any sort are unknown from the Proterozoic, but are common in the Cambrian; b) marine depositional environments predominated in the Proterozoic, but are unknown from Cambrian rocks; c) the Proterozoic fauna is more highly evolved than that of the Cambrian; d) shelled fossils are common in Cambrian rocks, but are rare in Proterozoic rocks.
D
The oldest confirmed land plants are known from the: a) Devonian; b) Proterozoic; c) Cambrian; d) Silurian; e) Pennsylvanian.
D
The trilobites were members of which major group (phylum) of animals? a) mollusks, b) echinoderms; c) chordates; d) arthropods; e) brachiopods.
D
Which of the following is the correct sequence (from oldest to youngest) for the periods of the Paleozoic: a) Cambrian, Ordovician, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian; b) Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous; c) Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic; d) Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian; e) Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous; f) Permian, Pennsylvanian, Mississippian, Devonian, Silurian, Ordovician, Cambrian
D
Greenstone belts: a) commonly occupy synclinal structures, b) are characteristic of Archean rocks, c) lack identical modern counterparts, d) contain both volcanic and volcanic-derived sedimentary rocks, e) all of the above.
E
The Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic Eons sum up to about which percentage of Earth's geologic history? a) 20 percent; b) 67 percent; c) 0.88 percent; d) 6.7 percent; e) 88 percent.
E
The increase of atmospheric oxygen during the Proterozoic: a) began after chemical oxygen sinks, such as unoxidized iron and sulfur, "filled up", b) was due to the production of oxygen by photosynthetic organisms, c) is evidenced by the appearance of "red beds" stained with oxidized iron, d) is reflected in the abundance of banded iron formation, e) all of the above.
E
The mass extinction event in which the greatest percentage of marine species disappeared occurred at the end of the: a) Cambrian; b) Late Devonian; c) Proterozoic; d) Ordovician; e) Permian.
E
The stromatoporoids have only recently been recognized as members of which phylum? a) Brachiopoda (brachiopods); b) Cnidaria (corals); c) Arthropoda (arthropods); d) Bryozoa (bryozoans); e) Porifera (sponges).
E
