Exam 19: A Slow Unfolding: the History of Life on Earth

Both gymnosperms and angiosperms may be pollinated by animals.

Mammals arose as a dominant life-form after which event?

The metabolism-first model suggests that a self-replicating RNA molecule was responsible for driving the evolution of the first forms of life.

One advantage of angiosperms over gymnosperms is that angiosperms have evolved:

The Cambrian explosion followed extinction of the dinosaurs.

The amniotic egg first appeared in which group of animals?

Propose reasons why major extinction events (or explosions of life-forms) are good dividing lines for the geologic timescale. Support your answer.

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:

Lobe-finned fish gave rise to tetrapods that successfully moved onto land.

Angiosperms are unique among plants because they produce ________.

What argument do scientists who support the metabolism-first model use to dispute the replicator-first model?

Photosynthesis was first performed by bacteria about 3.4 billion years ago.

Which of the following is the most likely candidate for the first eukaryotic life-forms to move onto land?

Laboratory experiments suggest that many of the kinds of organic molecules needed to form the first forms of life could have been made nonbiologically in Earth's early history.

Which of the following would support a hypothesis that insects preceded amphibians on land and were flourishing when the first amphibians evolved?

The Cambrian explosion of life is most notable for the:

Some of the earliest animals to successfully adapt to life on land were the:

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

Compare and contrast the life-forms found in Domains Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya.

Most evolutionary "branches" on the tree of life can read like the story of stepwise challenge and evolutionary innovation. For example, a cuticle solved the problem of maintaining moisture in the first terrestrial plants. Outline and explain the steps in the evolution of terrestrial vertebrates that lead to the evolution of mammals.