Ancient Collisions - HMH Unit 1 Lesson 1 Quiz

What is the fossil record?

• The list of all the fossils that exist.

• The history of a single fossil species.

• The history of life on Earth as recorded in fossils.

• The geologic history of the earth up to the appearance of life.

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NGSS.MS-LS4-1

How do scientists identify a mass extinction event in the fossil record?

• They look for a single species going extinct.

• They look for all the genera going extinct in a short period of time.

• They look for a lot of species going extinct over a long period of time.

• They look for a large drop in the number of genera over a short period of time.

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS4-1

Why does the moon appear to have more impact craters than Earth?

• The moon has no atmosphere to burn up the meteors before impact.

• The moon is older than the Earth so it has more impacts.

• Weathering and erosion on Earth slowly erase evidence of impacts.

• The Earth-moon system causes most meteors to change direction and hit the moon.

The mass extinction of the dinosaurs occurred 66 million years ago. This date corresponds to a thin layer in the fossil record with unusually high iridium levels. What did scientists need to confirm the hypotheses linking the high iridium levels to the dinosaur extinction?

• Find how iridium affects animals similar to dinosaurs.

• Search the fossil record to find if there are other periods that show high iridium levels.

• Find possible reasons for the high iridium levels that also explain the dinosaur extinction.

• Look for similarities between the dinosaurs and other genera that went through mass extinctions.

Tags

NGSS.MS-LS4-1

NGSS.MS-ESS2-3

What are the factors that affect the size of an impact crater?

• speed and mass

• mass and density

• density and speed

• speed, mass, and density

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NGSS.HS-PS2-3

How are causation and correlation related?

• A correlation without a cause is a coincidence.

• Causation is necessary for a correlation to exist.

• Causation and correlation are the same property.

• Correlation and causation are not related to each other.

The volcanism hypothesis explains iridium came from inside the Earth. It says that large amounts of lava were erupted where India is located today. What piece of data caused scientists to believe this hypothesis was incorrect?

• It was found the lava did not come from inside the Earth.

• The oceans, where most of the genera went extinct, were not affected by the lava.

• It took much longer for the lava eruptions to occur than it did for the iridium layer to form.

• The lava that erupted, which was quickly covered with soil, could not have cause the extinction.

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NGSS.MS-LS4-1

NGSS.MS-LS2-4

Choose a piece of evidence that support the hypothesis that an asteroid impact was responsible for the iridium anomaly.

• Unusual amounts of crystal formations in caves of the Yucatan Peninsula.

• obsidian deposits

• shocked quartz

• calcium deposits in a large circular pattern

Why did they not choose the Supernova hypothesis?

• The star would have been too far away to affect Earth.

• Stars don't emit iridium when they explode.

• The thin layer they found contained little to no plutonium.

• If a supernova occured Earth would have been destroyed.

Tags

NGSS.HS-ESS3-1