Jackman Biology: Darwin Quiz

Darwin noticed that many organisms seemed well suited to 

• being preserved as fossils.
• providing humans with food.
• surviving in the environments in which they lived.
• swimming from South America to the   Galápagos Islands.

Charles Darwin’s observation that finches of different species on the Galápagos Islands have many similar physical characteristics supports the hypothesis that these finches 
 

• have the ability to interbreed.
  have the ability to interbreed.
• acquired traits through use and disuse.
• all eat the same type of food.
• descended from a common ancestor.

Which of the following ideas is supported by Darwin’s observation of local variation among tortoises in the Galápagos Islands? 

• artificial selection
• adaptation
• acquired characteristics
• tendency towards perfection

People of Charles Darwin’s time understood that fossils were 

• preserved remains of ancient organisms.
• available for every organism that ever lived.
• unrelated to living species.
• evidence for the evolution of life on Earth.

James Hutton’s and Charles Lyell’s work suggests that

• Earth is several million years old.
• Earth is several thousand years old.
• all fossils were formed in the last 1000 years.
• all rocks on Earth contain fossils.

In the 1800s, Charles Lyell emphasized that 

• the human population will outgrow the available food supply.
• all populations evolve through natural selection.
• Earth is a few thousand years old.
• d. past geological events must be explained in terms of processes observable today.

One scientist who attempted to explain how rock formations, such as rock layers, form and change over time was 

• Thomas Malthus.
•  James Hutton.
• Charles Darwin.
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed that organisms 

• have an innate tendency toward complexity and perfection.
• have an innate tendency to become simpler as time passes.
• inherit all of the adaptations they display.
• belong to species that never change.

Lamarck’s ideas about evolution include the concept that differences among the traits of organisms arise as a result of

• continual increases in population size.
• the actions of organisms as they use or fail to use body structures.
• an unchanging local environment.
• the natural variations already present within the population of organisms.

The economist Thomas Malthus suggested that

• in the human population, people die faster than babies are born.
• without certain checks on population size, there would soon be insufficient food for the growing human population.
• in the 1700s, England needed more housing.
• the majority of a species’ offspring die.