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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What did Whittington do after assigning his students to work on some of the other genera?
(a) Begins work on Yohoia.
(b) Ends work on Yohoia.
(c) Finishes his monograph on Wiwaxia.
(d) Begins his monograph on Opabinia.

2. How many levels are there in the taxonomy of life?
(a) Few.
(b) Several.
(c) None.
(d) Hundreds.

3. How many new arthropod designs does The Burgess Shale contain?
(a) Sixty.
(b) Twenty.
(c) Twelve.
(d) Fifty.

4. What comprises the first 4 billion years of Earth's history?
(a) The Precambrian Era.
(b) The Prestige Era.
(c) The Mesozoic Era.
(d) The Cambrian Era.

5. What does Gould determine about the difference between eukaryotic fauna and the Burgess fauna?
(a) The difference is close.
(b) The difference is minimalist.
(c) The difference is vast.
(d) The difference is microscopic.

6. What did Whittington use to dissect the carapace of Opabinia?
(a) Old tools.
(b) New tools.
(c) New stringents.
(d) New methods.

7. What did Whittington conclude about Yohoia in 1975?
(a) Yohoia is in multiple systems.
(b) Yohoia is an unknown trilobite.
(c) Yohoia is a known arthropod.
(d) Yohoia does not fit anywhere.

8. What did Walcott think Opabinia was just another one of?
(a) Mollusk.
(b) Anemone.
(c) Plant.
(d) Crustacean.

9. What did Gould describe as characteristic of arthropods?
(a) Noodly proboscis.
(b) Odd segmented trunk.
(c) Hard, body shell.
(d) Bodily appendages.

10. In what fashion was the Burgess Shale actually discovered?
(a) A more mundane fashion.
(b) A reasonable fashion.
(c) A sympathetic fashion.
(d) A respectable fashion.

11. Who discovered Harry Whittington's analysis of fauna decades later?
(a) Des Collins.
(b) Walcott.
(c) Rutherford.
(d) Sebastian.

12. What did the new methods Whittington and his team adopted help them do?
(a) Transport the fossils.
(b) Recast the fossils.
(c) Study the fossils.
(d) Organize the fossils.

13. After publishing his first monograph, which two graduate students did Whittington employ?
(a) Jeremy Morris and Derek Briggs.
(b) Barry Moser and Simeon Martin.
(c) Simon Conway Morris and Derek Briggs.
(d) Briggs Morris and Simon Conway.

14. What make up periods?
(a) Decades.
(b) Eras.
(c) Epochs.
(d) Advents and Periods.

15. What association does Gould make with progress and evolution?
(a) Evolution doesn't always involve progress.
(b) Evolution always involves progress.
(c) Evolution is progress.
(d) Evolution is scattered progress.

Short Answer Questions

1. What cost comes with accepting Gould's picture of human evolution?

2. According to Gould, what kind of insight does the Burgess Shale offer into the nature of life and the evolution of life forms?

3. How many specimens of Opabinia are in the Burgess Shale?

4. Of Whittington's team, who was more methodologically conservative?

5. What kind of paradigm does Gould believe has not been communicated to the public?

(see the answer keys)

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