Exam 23: Paleobiology and Macroevolution

The potential seventh mass extinction refers to ____.

Plate tectonics causes oceanic ridges to form where ____.

Today, Australia, Antarctica, and South America represent fragments of ____.

Which element is least useful for dating fossils greater than 10 million years old?

Most dinosaurs died out by the end of the ____ period.

Over time, the carbon isotope¹⁴C decays into ____.

Which characteristic possessed by Archaeopteryx was least likely present in their dinosaurian ancestors?

Mammals underwent an evolutionary "explosion", or major adaptive radiation, during the ____.

The evolutionary mode in which species evolve rapidly at first and then remain stable for very long periods of time is called ____.

The term ____ refers to all the organisms, including plants and animals, living in a particular region.

A trait that is adaptive in one context and later turns out to have adaptive value in a different context is called ____.

Different clusters of related Galápagos finch species each occupy a somewhat different ____, a term that describes a general way of life.

The concept that most morphological changes in species occur gradually over long periods of time is known as the ____.

As a result of plate tectonics, new crust is added to the Earth at ____, and old crust is recycled into the mantle at ____.

An adaptive radiation may be triggered after the demise of a successful group.

The punctuated equilibrium hypothesis suggests that speciation usually occurs in isolated populations at the edge of a species' geographical distribution.

Why is fossil record biased and incomplete?

The diversity of terrestrial vascular plants has increased almost continuously since the ____ period.

The skulls of infant chimpanzees and infant humans are remarkably similar in shape. However, as they mature, they become quite different due to differences in ____.

To which zoogeographical realm does the North American continent belong?