Evolution Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
209 free Evolution trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Evolution trivia is bigger than Darwin. It covers what evolution actually is (a change in heritable traits across generations), the four processes that drive it (natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow), the four modes of speciation, the difference between an adaptation and an exaptation, why whales still have hip bones and chickens can be coaxed into growing teeth, and how a last universal common ancestor from roughly 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago turned into five billion species, more than 99 percent of them now extinct. This quiz also follows the history of the idea: Anaximander and Lucretius, Ibn Khaldun, Linnaeus and Lamarck, Malthus and the struggle for existence, Darwin and Wallace, Marsh's toothed birds and fossil horses, Mendel and Weismann, the modern synthesis, Watson, Crick and Franklin, Dobzhansky's 'nothing in biology makes sense' line, evo-devo, and the American courtroom battles from Scopes to Kitzmiller v. Dover. It also touches applications, from directed evolution and blind cavefish to genetic algorithms. Easy questions suit anyone who took school biology; the expert tier is for people who know which grass speciates around metal mines. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on evolution, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 209 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In biology, evolution is defined as the change in what over successive generations?
Heritable characteristics of populations
Heritable characteristics of populations shift when evolutionary processes act on genetic variation within a population.
Q 02Which two British naturalists independently conceived the theory of evolution by natural selection?
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: their papers were read together at the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858, after Wallace mailed Darwin an essay that matched his own unpublished theory.
Q 03In which book did Darwin first set out the theory in detail?
On the Origin of Species
On the Origin of Species, published in November 1859, was Darwin's first full account of natural selection; the anonymous 1844 Vestiges had already primed the public for evolution.
Q 04What is the ultimate source of all genetic variation in organisms?
Mutation
Mutation, a change in DNA sequence, is the only process that creates new alleles; gene flow, drift and selection only redistribute existing variation. Most protein-altering mutations are harmful or neutral, a few beneficial.
Q 05What is the random fluctuation of allele frequencies from one generation to the next called?
Genetic drift
Genetic drift is the random change in allele frequencies between generations caused by chance sampling; it acts fastest in small populations and can fix or eliminate alleles without selection.
Q 06According to the neutral theory of molecular evolution, most evolutionary change results from what?
Random drift fixing harmless mutations
Random drift fixing harmless mutations: the neutral theory of 1968 holds that most changes at the molecular level are selectively neutral and spread by genetic drift rather than by selection.
Q 07How is an organism's evolutionary fitness measured?
By its ability to survive and reproduce
Fitness is an organism's ability to survive and reproduce, measured as its genetic contribution to the next generation; an animal whose offspring all die before breeding contributes little.
Q 08What is a 'throwback' trait like hind legs in dolphins, from reactivated dormant genes, called?
An atavism
An atavism is the reappearance of an ancestral trait lost in evolution, such as hind-limb buds on dolphins or the regained wings reported in some stick insects.
Q 09Which term describes natural selection that favours both extremes of a trait over the average?
Disruptive
Disruptive selection favours both extremes over the intermediate, as in African seedcracker finches where large- and small-billed birds outcompete mid-sized ones; directional selection shifts the mean, stabilising selection narrows it.
Q 10Cumbersome antlers, mating calls and bright male colours are products of which evolutionary process?
Sexual selection
Sexual selection, Darwin's term for competition over mates, produces costly ornaments like antlers and bright plumage because they raise mating success even at a cost to survival.
Q 11In a famous long-term laboratory experiment, E. coli evolved the ability to use what as a nutrient?
Citric acid
A Flavobacterium separately evolved an enzyme to eat nylon by-products, and Sphingobium learned to degrade a synthetic pesticide.
Q 12The bones in a bat's wing closely match those in a mouse's foot and a human hand because of what?
Descent from a common mammalian ancestor
Descent from a common mammalian ancestor: bat wing, mouse foot and human hand are homologous pentadactyl limbs built from the same bones, inherited from a shared ancestor and modified for different uses.
Q 13Which of these is listed as a vestigial structure in humans?
The coccyx
Q 21Arabidopsis suecica arose about 20,000 years ago through what process, common in plants but rare in animals?
Hybridisation with chromosome doubling
Polyploidy lets the chromosomes of two parent species pair up properly at meiosis; the event has been repeated in the lab.
Q 22Which theory explains the fossil pattern of short bursts of evolution between long periods of stasis?
Punctuated equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium, proposed in 1972, holds that species stay stable for long spans and change rapidly at speciation in small isolated populations that rarely fossilise; it contrasts with phyletic gradualism.
Q 23Which mass extinction event was the largest in Earth's history, killing most marine species?
The coccyx, or tailbone, is the vestigial remnant of the ancestral mammalian tail, fused from three to five vertebrae; the appendix, goose bumps and wisdom teeth are other human vestiges.
Q 14What is the term for a structure that evolved for one function but became useful for another?
An exaptation
An exaptation is a trait co-opted for a new role: the flattened head of the lizard Holaspis guentheri evolved for hiding in crevices and now also aids gliding between trees.
Q 15Bones that form the jaw in other animals develop into which structure in mammals?
Part of the middle ear
Part of the middle ear: the reptilian articular and quadrate jaw bones became the mammalian malleus and incus, a transition traced in cynodont fossils and in embryonic development.
Q 16A genetic change in chickens can cause embryos to grow what, resembling those of crocodiles?
Teeth
Teeth: chicken embryos with the talpid2 mutation grow conical, crocodile-like teeth, reported by Harris and colleagues in 2006, showing that developmental genes for structures lost in bird evolution can be reactivated.
Q 17Which evolutionary biologist defined the Biological Species Concept in 1942?
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr set out the Biological Species Concept in his 1942 book Systematics and the Origin of Species: species are groups of interbreeding natural populations reproductively isolated from other such groups.
Q 18What is the most common way new animal species form, in geographically isolated populations?
Allopatric
Allopatric speciation, the commonest mode in animals, begins when a barrier such as a river or mountain range splits a population; selection and drift then act separately until the groups can no longer interbreed.
Q 19What term describes speciation in a small isolated population, driven by the founder effect?
Peripatric
Peripatric speciation, Ernst Mayr's term, occurs when a small group colonises an isolated area such as an island; the founder effect and drift in the tiny population drive rapid divergence.
Q 20The grass Anthoxanthum odoratum undergoes parapatric speciation in response to what?
Metal pollution from mines
Metal pollution from mines: sweet vernal grass on old mine spoil evolved heavy-metal tolerance and a shifted flowering time, reducing interbreeding with neighbouring non-tolerant plants, a textbook case of incipient parapatric speciation.
The Permian–Triassic
The Permian–Triassic extinction, about 252 million years ago, was the largest known; classic estimates put marine species losses near 96 percent, with Siberian Traps volcanism the leading suspected cause.
Q 24Roughly what proportion of all species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct?
More than 99%
More than 99%: over five billion species are estimated to have lived on Earth, and the roughly 1.2 to 1.9 million living species so far described are a tiny fraction of that total.
Q 25What does the acronym LUCA stand for?
Last universal common ancestor
Last universal common ancestor: LUCA is the most recent organism from which all living things descend, dated to roughly 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago or earlier; a 2016 study attributed 355 gene families to it.
Q 26How old is the Earth?
About 4.54 billion years
About 4.54 billion years: the Earth's age comes from radiometric dating of meteorites and the oldest minerals, with an uncertainty of about 50 million years; the universe itself is 13.8 billion years old.
Q 27Where were microbial mat fossils found in 3.48-billion-year-old sandstone?
Western Australia
Western Australia: microbially induced sedimentary structures were reported in 2013 from 3.48-billion-year-old sandstone of the Dresser Formation in the Pilbara region; older biogenic graphite from Greenland is 3.7 billion years old.
Q 28What percentage of their genomes do humans and chimpanzees share, according to DNA comparisons?
98%
The few areas of difference help date their common ancestor via the molecular clock.
Q 29Roughly when did eukaryotic cells emerge?
1.6 to 2.7 billion years ago
1.6 to 2.7 billion years ago: the oldest eukaryote-like fossils date to about 1.6 to 1.8 billion years, and later engulfment of bacteria produced mitochondria and, from cyanobacteria-like cells, chloroplasts.
Q 30The Cambrian explosion, in which most modern animal types appeared, began roughly how long ago?
539 million years
539 million years: the Cambrian explosion began at the start of the Cambrian period, about 538.8 million years ago, and over roughly 20 million years most modern animal phyla appeared in the fossil record.