TopHat Final Exam Review Questions

Question 1

What do cladograms show?

Answer 1

• how living (or formerly living) things are related to each other

Question 2

\what did the spinosaurus eat?

Answer 2

• fish (look at snout)

Question 3

All primitive dinosaurs are…

Answer 3

• bipedal

Question 4

The sauropoda consists of two clades, which are…

Answer 4

• the macronaria and the diplodocoidea

Question 5

How did sauropods likely breathe?

Answer 5

• unidirectionally

Question 6

Which characters are shared among the ornithiscians?

Answer 6

• palpebral, triangle shaped teeth, predentary

Question 7

What group or ornithiscians were the best chewers?

Answer 7

• ornithopods

Question 8

Which character is shared by the cerapoda?

Answer 8

• diastema

Question 9

Why is it unlikely that stegosaurus ran bipedally?

Answer 9

• their weight is distributed towards the front of their bodies

Question 10

What feature of stegosaurus was originally used to suggest they were bipedal?

Answer 10

• long hind limbs, short front limbs

Question 11

What is the likely purpose of the Thagomizer?

Answer 11

• defense

Question 12

Osteoderms are…

Answer 12

• plates, cones, spikes, and other shapes of bones which grow in the skin

Question 13

Which characteristics do all dinosaurs share?

Answer 13

• two pairs of temporal fenestrae, antorbital fenesterae, upright stance, ridge of the bone of the humerus

Question 14

All members of this clade possess osteoderms

Answer 14

• Thyreophora

Question 15

All members of this clade possess a prominant diastema

Answer 15

-cerpapoda

Question 16

All members of this clade possess a shelf of bones that extends off the back of the skull

Answer 16

-marginocephalia

Question 17

What clades exhibit the character of bird like hips?

Answer 17

• ornithsichia
• thyreophora
• marginocephalia
• cerapoda
• ornithopoda

Question 18

Which clades have the primitive character of lizard-like hips?

Answer 18

• saurischia
• sauropodomorpha
• theropoda

Question 19

The Nodosauridae are best characterized by what features?

Answer 19

• narrow skull, large shoulder spikes, short forelimbs

Question 20

In North America, the most common pachycephalosaur remains are ___. These isolated remains are thought to have travelled long distances, suggesting pachycephalosaurs likely lived_____.

Answer 20

• skull domes

- near the mountains

Question 21

What evidence suggests that a large asteroid hit the Earth 65.6 million years ago?

Answer 21

• a large crater in the gulf of mexico
• shocked quartz
• Tektites (small pieces of glassy debris formed from molten rock)
• high concentration of irridium

Question 22

What organisms went extinct as a result of the asteroid that impacted the earth?

Answer 22

• dinosaurs and other terrestrial organisms
• mosasaurs and other marine organisms
• plants

Question 23

In general, what features of the survivors of the asteroid impact allowed them to survive?

Answer 23

• small size, generalist diet

Question 24

What likely happened to environments and climates as a result of the asteroid impact?

Answer 24

• rapid heating and wildfires followed by global cooling due to atmospheric sulfer

Question 25

Are the dinosaurs really extinct?

Answer 25

• No!

Question 26

Which group is characterized by the presense of a furcula?

Answer 26

• Neotheropoda

Question 27

Neotheropod footprints are different from ornithopod footprints because….

Answer 27

• neotheropod tracks have 3 toes ending in claw marks

Question 28

This group of theropods had a semi-lunate wrist bone:

Answer 28

-maniraptora

Question 29

Why aren’t mosasaurs dinosaurs?

Answer 29

• they do not have antorbital fenestrae