1) Which large animals were wiped out by the Cretaceous extinction?

A) sharks

B) dinosaurs

C) whales

D) mammoths

2) The greatest extinction event of all time occurred at the end of the:

A) Permian period.

B) Mesozoic era.

C) Cretaceous period.

D) Cambrian period.

3) If a 10-mile-wide comet hit Earth, how would this likely affect the history of life?

A) A mass extinction would occur, followed by lots of evolutionary change among descendants of the survivors.

B) A slow climate warming and drying would begin, decreasing the biological diversity on Earth.

C) Continental drift would be reversed, and all the continents would slowly be pushed together again.

D) Most species would become extinct, and the rest would remain more or less unchanged.

4) Sections of the geologic timescale are defined by:

A) how close the rocks are to the surface of the earth.

B) whether the rocks are metamorphic or sedimentary.

C) the age of the rocks.

D) the kinds of fossils present.

5) The end of the ________ era was marked by a transition into an explosion of life-forms rather than an extinction event.

A) Precambrian

B) Mesozoic

C) Paleozoic

D) Jurassic

Refer to the scenario below, and then answer the following question(s).

You are the managing naturalist for a natural history museum that has just received a batch of fossils from one of the field paleontologists sponsored by the museum. The note in the box states the fossils all came from the same rock layer. The museum is organized according to geologic timescale, and its management needs you to tell them to which department (based on era) and period specialist (an individual with experience with life-forms of a particular geologic-timescale period) the fossils should go. You find fossils of fish and seed-bearing plants but no reptiles or higher animals and no flowering plants.

6) To which era do these fossils belong?

A) Precambrian

B) Paleozoic

C) Mesozoic

D) Cenozoic

7) To which period specialist should you forward the fossils?

A) Devonian

B) Carboniferous

C) Permian

D) Triassic

8) Some rock strata associated with coal seams in Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania can be shown to have the same mixture of pollen grain types. This suggests that these rocks are/were:

A) the same age.

B) equally radioactive.

C) deposited from a common source material.

D) the same type of rock.

9) During which of these eras were dinosaurs dominant?

A) Paleozoic

B) Precambrian

C) Mesozoic

D) Cenozoic

10) What is the significance of finding evidence that zirconium/uranium rocks formed in water 4.2 million years ago?

A) Zirconium can be used for dating old rock samples.

B) The Earth coalesced from gas earlier than originally thought.

C) The Earth cooled earlier than originally thought.

D) Radiation played a role in the origin of life.