Exam 34: Vertebrates

Mammals and birds eat more often than reptiles. Which of the following traits shared by mammals and birds best explains this habit?

Which of the following organisms is considered the most recent common ancestor of living tetrapods?

Which clade does not include humans?

During chordate evolution, which of the following structures arose first?

If a tunicate's pharyngeal gill slits were blocked by a foreign object, which of the following processes would the organism have trouble performing?

The ancestors of amniotes laid eggs in water. It could be argued that embryos of amniotes still develop in water for which of the following reasons?

Which of the following statements is correct regarding lancelets?

In vertebrates, the earliest known mineralized structures were associated with body parts involved in which of the following processes?

In what respect do hominins differ from all other anthropoids?

Which of the following could be considered the most recent common ancestor of living tetrapods?

Which of the following characteristics evolved independently in mammals and birds?

The evolution of similar insulating skin coverings such as fur, hair, and feathers in mammals and birds is a result of which of the following evolutionary processes?

Which of these statements accurately describes a similarity between sharks and ray-finned fishes?

While hiking in a tropical rainforest, you find a large, snakelike organism that is 1-meter-long, has smooth skin, and appears to be segmented. You think it might be a snake or an amphibian. Which of the following characteristics, if observed, should help you arrive at a conclusive answer?

Arrange the following taxonomic terms in order from most inclusive to least inclusive.

As hominins diverged from other primates, which of the following appeared first?

Use the following information to answer the question. Brown et al. and Morwood et al. reported in 2004 that they had found skeletal remains of a previously unknown type of hominin, now dubbed Homo floresiensis, on the Indonesian island of Flores. These hominins were small (approximately 1 m tall) with small braincases (approximately 380 cm3) as compared with other hominins. The remains of H.floresiensis were found alongside handmade stone tools and the remains of dwarf elephants that also inhabited the island, suggesting that H. floresiensis was able both to make tools and to coordinate the hunting of animals much larger than itself. H. floresiensis is estimated to have lived at the site where the remains were found from 700,000 years ago to 60,000 years ago. The table is a comparison of several characteristics of H. floresiensis to those of nine other hominin species (arranged roughly from oldest to most recent). What do these data suggest?

Female birds lay their eggs, thereby facilitating flight by reducing weight. Which "strategy" seems most likely for female bats to use to achieve the same goal?

Which of these structures would most likely have been observed in the common ancestor of chondrichthyans and osteichthyans?

Living vertebrates can be divided into two major clades. Select the appropriate pair.