Back to quiz

6. Which is not a process seen in Proterozoic ocean chemistry, Canfield (1998)

  • Loss of sulphide in oceans middle to late Proterozoic
  • Redox sedimentary burial of organic matter, iron and uranium, reflect the conditions previaling during the weathering
  • The sulphur isotope record indicates and increase of ocean sulphate, 2.3 Gyr, leading to an increased rate of sulphide from sulphate reduction
  • Last large precipitation of BIF's around 1.8Gyr, which precipitated from an ocean whose bottom waters contained dissolved ferrous iron
  • The sedimentation processes terminated when aerobic bottom waters developed, oxidizing the iron and removing it from the solution

7. Which is not a feature of Lavers, Why Elephants have big ears? (For birds)

  • Their wing size has decreased over the years for better flights and their beaks have adapted regarding their change in diet
  • The age of the mammals is a period of diversification over the past 70 million years and also the age of the birds. Evolution of still in the age of dinosaurs?
  • Birds are driven by powerful metabolic engines, maintain their bodies at a high/constant temps and have extremely high aerobic capacities (39-42'C) Warm blooded

8. Which is not an 'Aristotle Four Causes'?

  • Efficient causes
  • Informal causes
  • Final causes
  • Formal causes
  • Materical causes

9. Which is not a feature of Trewick et al (2007) Hello New Zealand?

  • There is decreasing evidence from molecular data that much of this biodiversity is the product of evolution following relatively recent colonization
  • Oceanic islands, generally the products of volcanic activity, provide natural experiments as biological populations are well delimited and the age of islands can be determined using radiometric dating.
  • It is widely accepted that the flora and fauna is primarily ancient and of vicariant Gondwannan origin
  • Whether modern NZ has a terrestrial link through time with the continent Zealandia or whether NZ present terrestrial existence is the product of tectonic activity initiated around 2.6 Ma?

10. Which is not a feature of Lavers, Why Elephants have big ears? (For dinosaurs)

  • Made bold claim in the 90's that dinosaurs were warm blooded just like birds and mammals, as they have always been perceived as cold blooded
  • Claimed they were no longer reptiles as the tetrapod tree showed that they were just a different as mammals were to reptiles
  • Bakkers 1960 collated info from palaeontologists, biologists and ecologists and reinterpreted the Mesozoic world
  • He explained his ling of reasoning based in the ecological consequences of differences in metabolic rate and the relationship between predator and prey

11. Which is not a feature of The rise of an atmospheric oxygen, Kump (2008)?

  • Persistant anoxia of the oceans in the Protozoic is argued to have required at least 40% oxygen
  • Most geological indicators of ancient atmospheric oxygen levels imply presence or absence
  • Physiological effects of and defenses against oxygen in plants and animals
  • MIF disapear when oxygen levels reach 0.001% and iron is retained in ancient lithified soils when oxygen reaches 1%
  • Fire is sustained only above 21% so the record of charcoal shows a % lower than this since the advent of forests on earth
  • Redox indicators from marine sediments, requiring that internal ocean processes that affect deep ocean oxygen levels and by looking at the effect that oxygen has had on carbon isotope fractionation
  • Fire is sustained only above 60% so the record of charcoal shows a % lower than this since the advent of forests on earth

12. What did McGrew, Philosophy of Science, an Historical Anthology, not comment on?

  • Demarcation Criterion and the distinction between metaphysics and pseudo-scientific varieties?
  • Logical positivism and the Vienna Circle?
  • Lakatos and the methodology of Research Programmes who opposed Kuhn's idea and supported Poppers
  • Kuhn's idea of reflection on actual science history undermines the normative constraint met by a set of rules
  • Popper and his idea that all theories are born refuted?
  • The concepts of Prescience, Exemplar and Paradigm.

13. Which is not a feature of Retallack (2002) Carbon dioxide and climate over the past 300Myr?

  • CO2–temperature uncoupling has been proposed from geological time-series of carbon isotopic composition of palaeosols and of marine phytoplankton, which fail to indicate high CO2 at known times of high palaeotemperature
  • Co2 and temperature can be measured via physical chemistry, planetary geometry and current global modelling but not from time-series of geological data
  • The primary reason for the return of low CO2 was carbon consumption by hydrolytic weathering and photosynthesis, stimulated by mountain uplift and changing patterns of oceanic thermohaline circulation
  • Co2 and temperature have had a relationship since 300 Myr
  • Past CO2 highs were in times of catastrophic release of CH4 from clathrates, but of asteroid and comet impacts, flood basalt eruptions and mass extinctions.
  • Geological tests of this idea seek to compare proxies of past atmospheric CO2 with other proxies of palaeotemperature. For at least the past 300 Myr, there is a remarkably high temporal correlation between peaks of atmospheric CO2
  • 1) Stomatal density has changed by different partial pressures of CO2 2) warm palaeotemperature in the ocean corresponds with high atmospheric 3) There has been current CO2 levels in the past such as in the Early Tertiary

14. Which is not a feature of the Journal of Biogeography commentary (2005) Goodbye Gondwana?

  • But there is no reason why dispersalist universe with a much diminished role for Gondwana cannot be as appealing with each taxon having its unique history a complex network of relationships reaching across the entire globe
  • The southern end of the world is where the two central ideas of historical biogeography, vicariance and dispersal, have had their most intense encounter
  • The land that time forgot, or the ancient dinosaur forests of the NZ, unchanged for 600myr
  • Unchanging Gondwanic heritage is an important cultural icon

15. Which was not a key feature of Aristotle's observer of nature role?

  • What are the differences between the study of living things?
  • How do the difference sorts of causes give structure to the enquiry?
  • How should we grasp the real cause of things?
  • Study nature via metaphysics by looking at identity, continuity and logical form etc
  • Study animals in classes or one by one?

16. What does Haile et al in Ancient DNA reveals late survival of mammoth and horse in interior Alaska, reveal?

  • That the use of sedimentary DNA shows that these megafauna persisted in Alaska until 10,500 yr BP, as opposed to 13,000-15,000 yr BP which was shown by LADS
  • SedaDNA showed that megafauna we extinct long before the onset of the Holocene and that they never overlapped with humans for several millenia
  • Claims that the main cause of megafauna extinction was solely down to overkill and other factors such as climate, vegetation, hyper diseases and terrestrial impact did not contribute at all

17. Which is not a feature of Giribet and Boyer (2010) Moa's Ark or Goodbye Gondwanna?

  • NZ had indeed had old lineages as well as recently diversified lineages and compare this situation with that of other more stable areas of Neotropics.
  • NZ has been traditionally considered to host ancient bioata that originated by vicariance after it separated from Australia, 80mya
  • NZ has been traditionally considered to host ancient bioata that originated by dispersal after it separated from Australia, 80mya
  • Short range endemic soil dwelling invertebrates show that at least some of them are the result of old lineages that diversified in NZ before the hypothesised submersion event 22mya
  • The ancient origins of its biota have been questioned recently with some suggesting that all current land organisms had to arrive to the islands after it re-emerged from the ocean 22mya

18. Which is not a feature of Barnosky's (2011) Has the Earths 6th extinction already arrived?

  • Differences between fossil and modern data and the addition of recently available palaeontological information influence our understanding of the current extinction crisis
  • Current extinction rates are higher than would be expected from the fossil record, highlighting the need for effective conservation measures.
  • Palaeontologists characterize mass extinctions as times when the Earth loses more than 1/2 of its species in a geologically short interval, as has happened only 5x in the past 540million years
  • Biologists now suggest that a sixth mass extinction may be under way, given the known species losses over the past few centuries and millennia

19. Which is not a feature of the Late Proterozoic Low Latitude Global Glaciation, Kirschvink (1992)

  • If the earth had normal obliquity during an equatorial glaciation we would expect that areas of high latitude would be colder than the equator
  • Snowball Earth theory is criticized as 1) galcial units should be synchronou and they're not 2) climate fluctuations show strata and lithology similar and 3) floating ice packs would have halted all processes and made the oceanic bottom waters anoxic
  • Late Proterozoic glacial episodes marks a turning point in evolution life, but critics say we shouldn't suggest that evolutionary changes were made by glaciations by the removal of life from higher latitudes creating post glacial sweepstakes
  • Williams (1975) suggested that if the earths obliquity reached angles higher than 54' the relative annual balance would shift and warm poles more than equator, but criticised
  • Large proportions of continental land masses were in the middle to low latitudes during the late Precambrian glacial episode, where most of the solar enegery would have been absorbed by the tropical oceans and reflected by the continents
  • Extensive sea level deposits were formed by widespread continental glaciers which were in a few degrees of the equator