Age of Dinosaurs Exam 2 Study Guide – Flashcards
Flashcard maker : Claire Scott
What are the two great clades of the Dinosauria?
Ornithischia; Saurischia
List the five major clades of Dinosauria that define the two great clades.
Ornithopoda; Sauropodomorpha; Marginocephalia; Thyreophora; Theropoda
What dinosaur skeletal part has given us the most information about the diversity, behavior, life styles, and evolution of the group?
The skull
Sauropodomorpha consists of two clades, the _____________ and _______________.
prosauropods, sauropods
Ankylosauria is composed of two monophyletic groups, _____________ and _______________.
Nodosauridae, Ankylosauridae
Characteristic features of hadrosaurids include:
intricate dental batteries, broad beaks lacking teeth, loss of the thumb
The features of the pachycephalosaurid skull and skeleton likely designed to resist impacts include the:
reinforces upper lip of the hip socket, shortened base of the skull, greatly thickened dome of the skull
Nodosaurid skulls ______________________.
lacked horns at their posterior corners
What important morphological development in the ornithopods gave them the ability to chew the toughest and most fibrous plants?
Pleurokinesis
Evolutionary novelties of the neoceratopsia include:
the broad frill
Most large carnivorous dinosaurs were members of which theropod clades?
Carnosauria; Tyrannosauria
Hadrosaurids were most successful and widespread during the:
Late Cretaceous
All protoceratopsids were of ______________ age.
Late Cretaceous
Stegosaurs reached their highest diversity during the:
Late Jurassic
Tyrannosaurid fossils are of _____________ age.
Late Cretaceous
Ceratopsids are known only from the Late Cretaceous of:
North America
The sudden reappearance of sauropod dinosaurs in North America about 70 million years ago likely reflects:
immigration from South America
The defensive strategy of ankylosauria was based on:
impervious armor
Evidence for group behavior in sauropods is provided by:
trackways; mass death assemblages; nests of eggs
The plates of Stegosaurus primarily functioned as:
solar panels/radiators; display
Deinonychus must have walked on how many toes of each hind foot?
two
Pleurocoels may have been used for:
augmenting the volume of air in the lungs
Adult sauropod dinosaurs maintained a constant body temperature by being:
inertial homeotherms
The valid name for the dinosaur popularly called “Brontosaurus” is:
apatosaurus
“Anything we suggest about the biology of Dinosaurs should make sense in terms of what we know about the biology of living organisms.” This is a good example of the application of which of the following fundamental principles of the geosciences?
Principle of Uniformitarianism
The first dinosaur to be described scientifically was:
Megalosaurus
Iguanodon was so named because its:
teeth resembled those of an iguana
The first comprehensive view of dinosaurs that emerged in the 1850’s was due to the collaborative work of:
Richard Own and Benjamin W. Hawkins
The many dinosaur skeletons collected during the great dinosaur rush were primarily studied by:
Edward D. Cope and Othinel C. Marsh
A phylogeny is:
a family tree or an evolutionary history of taxa
A monophyletic group is identified by:
shared evolutionary novelties
The amniote egg:
has an amnion; is characteristic of reptiles; often has a mineralized shell
The amniotic egg and skeletal modifications for terrestrial locomotion are some of the key shared derived characters that distinguish reptiles from:
amphibians
The geologic process most responsible for producing the layering in sediments and sedimentary rocks is:
deposition
Common sedimentary rocks are:
sandstone; conglomerate; shale
The study of sedimentary rocks and their formation is called:
sedimentology
Fluvial sedimentary environments refer to sediment deposition associated with:
rivers
Dinosaur fossils are most likely going to be found in:
fluvial sedimentary rocks
Most dinosaur fossils from lacustrine sedimentary rocks:
are from shoreline or river-delta deposits on the lake margins
Eolian environments are those where the major agent of deposition is:
wind
The principle of faunal succession (biostratigraphic correlation) states that:
life that existed during a particular interval of earth history is unique for that time interval
“Stegosaurus is older than Tyrannosaurus” is a:
relative age statement
Of the pre-Cambrian, Cenozoic, Paleozoic, and Mesozoic intervals of geologic time, which is the youngest?
Cenozoic
The principle of uniformitarianism states:
geologic features formed long ago were produced by processes still at work today
The geologic time scale is based upon:
building a composite column of sedimentary rock layers from oldest to youngest using fossil correlation
In a sequence of layered sedimentary rocks the oldest layer will always:
be found at the bottom
Correlation of sedimentary rocks:
is possible from one continent to another by means of fossils
Abundant fossils did not appear in the geologic record until:
the beginning of the Paleozoic Era
If all geologic time (4.5 billion years) is fit into a single year, when did the dinosaurs exist?
from December 15th to 25th
The eras of geologic time called the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic have been defined on the basis of:
important sudden global mass extinction events in the history of life that form the boundaries of these eras
