The Fossil Record and Chapters 17 & 18

Question 1

What is one of the things that helps provide evidence about the history of life on earth? What does that history include?

Answer 1

The fossil records provides evidence about the history of life on Earth and shows how different groups of organisms, including species, have changed over time.

Question 2

What is the fun fact thing?

Answer 2

99% of all species that have ever lived on Earth have become extinct

Question 3

Where do most fossils form?

Answer 3

In sedimentary rock

Question 4

What usually forms in sedimentary rock?

Answer 4

Fossils

Question 5

Define paleontologists

Answer 5

Scientists who study fossils

Question 6

What is created when exposure to the elements breaks down existing rock into small particles of sand, silt, and clay?

Answer 6

Sedimentary rock

Question 7

What is it called when the age of a fossil is determined by its placement with that of fossils in other layers of rock

Answer 7

Relative dating

Question 8

What do scientists use to compare the relative age of fossils?

Answer 8

Index fossils

Question 9

What is a species that is recognizable and existed for a short period but had a wide geographic range?

Answer 9

An index fossil

Question 10

What are some characteristics of an index fossil?

Answer 10

It’s recognizable and existed for a short period but had a wide geographic range

Question 11

What do you use to determine the age of a sample based on the amount of remaining radioactive isotopes it contains

Answer 11

Half-lives

Question 12

What is the length of time required for half of the radioactive atoms in a sample to decay?

Answer 12

Half-life

Question 13

What was developed through fossils (animals and plants) in layers of rock and by using radioactive dating?

Answer 13

The Geologic Time Scale

Question 14

How was the Geologic Time Scale developed?

Answer 14

It was developed through fossils (animals and plants) in layers of rock and by using radioactive dating

Question 15

What is the oldest period of time?

Answer 15

Precambrian time

Question 16

What is the period inside the Precambrian era?

Answer 16

The Vendian era

Question 17

What are the 3 eras?

Answer 17

Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic

Question 18

What era covers 88% of history?

Answer 18

Precambrian time

Question 19

How much time does the Precambrian Era cover?

Answer 19

About 88% of Earth’s history

Question 20

What is the order of the time periods from oldest to newest?

Answer 20

Vendian, Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and Quaternary

Question 21

What’s the order from oldest to newest time periods in the paleozoic era?

Answer 21

Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian

Question 22

What’s the order from oldest to newest time periods in the mesozoic era?

Answer 22

Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous

Question 23

What’s the order from oldest to newest time periods in the cenozoic era?

Answer 23

Tertiary, Quaternary

Question 24

What term is used to refer to large-scale evolutionary patterns and processes that occur over long periods of time?

Answer 24

Macroevolution

Question 25

What is macroevolution?

Answer 25

Biologists use the term to refer to large-scale evolutionary patterns and processes that occur over long periods of time

Question 26

What are the 6 important topics of macroevolution?

Answer 26

Extinction, Adaptive radiation, convergent evolution, coevolution, punctuated equilibrium, and changes in developmental genes

Question 27

What do extinction, adaptive radiation, convergent evolution, coevolution, punctuated equilibrium, and changes in developmental genes all have in common?

Answer 27

They're all topics of macroevolution

Question 28

What resulted in a burst of evolution that produced new species?

Answer 28

[mass] extinctions

Question 29

What resulted in open habitats and provided ecological opportunities for those organisms that survived?

Answer 29

Extinction

Question 30

What happens when a single species or small group of species evolves through natural selection and other processes into diverse forms that live in different ways?

Answer 30

Adaptive Radiation

Question 31

What is adaptive radiation?

Answer 31

When a single species or small group of species evolves through natural selection and other processes into diverse forms that live in different ways

Question 32

What is it called when unrelated organisms come to resemble one another and natural selection molds different body structures like legs and arms into modified forms like wings or flippers?

Answer 32

Convergent evolution

Question 33

What is convergent evolution?

Answer 33

When unrelated organisms come to resemble one another and natural selection molds different body structures like legs and arms into modified forms like wings or flippers

Question 34

What is it called when organisms that are closely connected to one another by ecological interactions evolve together, evolutionary changes in one organism may be followed by a corresponding change in another organism, and two species evolve in response to changes in each other over time?

Answer 34

Coevolution

Question 35

What is coevolution?

Answer 35

When organisms that are closely connected to one another by ecological interactions evolve together, evolutionary changes in one organism [may] be followed by a corresponding change in another organism, and two species evolve in response to changes in each other over time.

Question 36

What is a pattern of long, stable periods interrupted by brief periods of more rapid change called?

Answer 36

Punctuated equilibrium

Question 37

What is punctuated equilibrium?

Answer 37

A pattern of long, stable periods interrupted by brief periods of more rapid change called?

Question 38

What might explain how differences evolve?

Answer 38

Changes in the expression of developmental genes ["body plans"]

Question 39

What is the balanced distribution of duplicate body parts or shapes?

Answer 39

Symmetry in biology

Question 40

What are the 3 types of symmetry?

Answer 40

Radial symmetry, bilateral symmetry, and spherical symmetry

Question 41

Do most organisms exhibit symmetry or not?

Answer 41

Most organisms exhibit some sort of symmetry, a small minority are asymmetric

Question 42

What is approximate in nature and biology?

Answer 42

Symmetry

Question 43

What's one example of approximate symmetry?

Answer 43

Plant leaves- they're considered symmetric but rarely match up perfectly when folded in half

Question 44

What means being capable of being split int o two equal parts so that one part is a mirror image of the other?

Answer 44

Bilateral symmetry

Question 45

What is bilateral symmetry?

Answer 45

Being capable of being split int o two equal parts so that one part is a mirror image of the other

Question 46

What is it called when organisms resemble a pie where several cutting planes produce roughly identical pieces?

Answer 46

Radial symmetry

Question 47

What kind of organisms exhibit no left or right sides and only has top and bottom surfaces?

Answer 47

An organism with radial symmetry

Question 48

What is spherical symmetry?

Answer 48

When an animal is a sphere (like a sea urchin)

Question 49

What kind of symmetry do starfish exhibit as adults?

Answer 49

Pentaradial symmetry

Question 50

What kind of symmetry are starfish's ancestors believed to have had?

Answer 50

Bilateral symmetry

Question 51

What kind of organisms exhibit bilateral symmetry only as larval forms?

Answer 51

Starfish, as well as other echinoderms, exhibit bilateral symmetry only as larval forms

Question 52

What is a key theme in ecology?

Answer 52

Interdependence

Question 53

What do species interact with?

Answer 53

Both other species and their nonliving environment

Question 54

What is it called when one change can affect all species in an ecosystem?

Answer 54

Interdependence

Question 55

What is interdependence?

Answer 55

One change can affect species in an ecosystem

Question 56

What is the hierarchy of organization in the environment?

Answer 56

Biosphere, ecosystem, community, population, and organism

Question 57

What is the broadest, most inclusive level of organization is the biosphere, the volume of Earth and its atmosphere that supports life?

Answer 57

The biosphere

Question 58

What includes all of the organisms and the nonliving environment found in a particular place?

Answer 58

An ecosystem

Question 59

What is all the interacting organisms living in an area?

Answer 59

A community

Question 60

What is the level of organization where the focus is on the individual organisms of a single specis?

Answer 60

The population

Question 61

What are biotic and abiotic factors?

Answer 61

Biotic factors are living factors. Abiotic factors are nonliving factors that influence organisms (climate, sunlight, pH, etc)

Question 62

What is it called when some organisms can adjust their tolerance to abiotic factors?

Answer 62

Acclimation

Question 63

What is an organism called when it can't regulate their internal condition and they change as their external environment changes?

Answer 63

A conformer

Question 64

What kind of organisms use energy to control some of their internal conditions?

Answer 64

Regulators

Question 65

How do some species survive unfavorable conditions?

Answer 65

By becoming dormant or by migrating

Question 66

What is a way of life, or role, in an ecosystem?

Answer 66

A niche

Question 67

Most of what are photosynthetic and make carbohydrates by using energy from the sun?

Answer 67

Producers

Question 68

What is the rate at which producers in an ecosystem capture the energy of sunlight by producing organic compounds?

Answer 68

Gross primary productivity

Question 69

What is the rate at which biomass accumulates called?

Answer 69

Net primary productivity

Question 70

What obtains energy by eating other organisms and includes herbivores, omnivores, carnivores, detritivores, and decomposers?

Answer 70

Consumers

Question 71

What is a single pathway of energy transfer called?

Answer 71

A food chain

Question 72

What is a network showing all paths of energy transfer called?

Answer 72

A food web

Question 73

Why do ecosystems contain only a few trophic levels?

Answer 73

Because there is a low rate of energy transfer between each level

Question 74

What contains only a few trophic levels because there is a low rate of energy transfer between each level?

Answer 74

Ecosystems

Question 75

What are the key processes in the water syscle?

Answer 75

Evaporation, transpiration, and precipitation

Question 76

Photosynthesis and cellular respiration are the two main steps in what?

Answer 76

The carbon cycle

Question 77

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria are important in what because they change nitrogen gas into a usable form of nitrogen for plants?

Answer 77

The nitrogen cycle

Question 78

What is the mort important thing in the nitrogen cycle?

Answer 78

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria

Question 79

What happens in the phosphorous cycle?

Answer 79

Phosphorus moves from the phosphate deposited in rock, to the soil to living organisms, and finally to the ocean

Question 80

What is the variety of organisms considered at all levels from populations to ecosystems?

Answer 80

Biodiversity

Question 81

Who replaced Aristotle's classification system and why?

Answer 81

Naturalists replaced Aristotle's classification system because it did not adequately cover all organisms and because his use of common names was problematic

Question 82

What is the science of describing, naming, and classifying organisms?

Answer 82

Taxonomy

Question 83

What did Carolus Linnaeus devise?

Answer 83

He created a seven-level hierarchical system for classifying organisms according to their form and structure

Question 84

What are the origional seven levels of the Linnaean system?

Answer 84

Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species

Question 85

What is binomial nomenclature?

Answer 85

Assigning each species a two-part scientific name- a genus name and a species identifier

Question 86

What is the system of assigning each species a two part name called?

Answer 86

Binomial nomenclature

Question 87

What analyzes the diversity of organisms in the context of their natural relationships?

Answer 87

Systematics

Question 88

What do scientists consider when classifying organisms?

Answer 88

Fossils, homologous features, embryos, chromosomes, and the sequences of proteins and DNA

Question 89

What displays how closely related a subset of taxa are thought to be?

Answer 89

A phylogenetic diagram

Question 90

What provides evidence of shared ancestry?

Answer 90

Homologous features as well as similarities in patterns of embryological development provides information about common ancestry

Question 91

What uses shared derived characters as the only criterion for grouping taxa?

Answer 91

Cladistics

Question 92

What is molecular cladistics?

Answer 92

Molecular similarities such as similar amino acid or nucleotide sequences, as well as chromosome comparisons, can help determine common ancestry

Question 93

What is cladistics?

Answer 93

Finding common ancestry

Question 94

Analyzing karyotypes can provide more information on what?

Answer 94

Evolutionary relationships

Question 95

What can cladistics be mapped on?

Answer 95

A cladogram

Question 96

What led to a new tree of life?

Answer 96

The phylogenetic analysis of rRNA nucleotide sequences by Carol Woese

Question 97

What does the new "tree of life" consist of?

Answer 97

Three domains aligned with six kingdoms

Question 98

What are the three domains?

Answer 98

Archaea, bacteria, and Eukarya

Question 99

What does domain bacteria align with and what does it consist of?

Answer 99

Domain bacteria aligns with kingdom eubacteria, which consists of single-celled prokaryotes that are true bacteria

Question 100

What does domain Archaea align with and what does it consist of?

Answer 100

Domain Archaea aligns with Kingdom Archaebacteria, which consists of single-celled prokaryotes that have distinctive cell membranes and cell walls

Question 101

What 4 Kingdoms does Domain Eukarya align with and what does it consist of?

Answer 101

It includes the Kingdoms Protista, Plantae, Fungi, and Animalia. All members of Domain Eukarya have eukaryotic cells