170 free Evolution trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 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 170 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Evolution is defined as the change in what over successive generations?
Heritable characteristics of populations
It happens 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
Darwin preferred the phrase 'descent with modification' to 'evolution'.
Q 03In which book did Darwin first set out the theory in detail?
On the Origin of Species
It was published in 1859, and Vestiges, an anonymous 1844 book, had already stirred up the public.
Q 04What is the ultimate source of all genetic variation in organisms?
Mutation
Such changes may alter a gene's product, disable it, or do nothing; about half of those in coding regions are harmful and half neutral.
Q 05What is the random fluctuation of allele frequencies from one generation to the next called?
Genetic drift
It works fastest in small populations and can fix or eliminate alleles by chance alone.
Q 06According to the neutral theory of molecular evolution, most evolutionary change results from what?
Random drift fixing harmless mutations
The better-supported 'nearly neutral' version notes that a change harmless in a small population may not be harmless in a large one.
Q 07How is an organism's evolutionary fitness measured?
By its ability to survive and reproduce
It is not simply the number of offspring: an animal whose young all die contributes little to future generations.
Q 08What is a 'throwback' trait like hind legs in dolphins, from reactivated dormant genes, called?
An atavism
Wingless stick-insect species have regrown wings the same way.
Q 09Which term describes natural selection that favours both extremes of a trait over the average?
Disruptive
Directional selection shifts the average; stabilising selection squeezes variation towards it.
Q 10Cumbersome antlers, mating calls and bright male colours are products of which evolutionary process?
Sexual selection
The survival cost is offset by higher mating success from hard-to-fake displays.
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
Even squid and vertebrate eyes share a common set of homologous genes, an idea called deep homology.
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
It links rapid change to speciation in small or isolated populations that rarely fossilise.
Q 23Which mass extinction wiped out about 96 percent of marine species?
The Permian–Triassic
The appendix, goose bumps and some primitive reflexes are others; whales and snakes keep vestigial hip bones.
Q 14What is the term for a structure that evolved for one function but became useful for another?
An exaptation
The flat head of the lizard Holaspis guentheri evolved for hiding in crevices and now helps it glide.
Q 15Bones that form the jaw in other animals develop into which structure in mammals?
Part of the middle ear
It is a favourite example of evolutionary developmental biology.
Q 16A genetic change in chickens can cause embryos to grow what, resembling those of crocodiles?
Teeth
It shows lost structures can reappear through changes in developmental genes.
Q 17Which evolutionary biologist defined the Biological Species Concept in 1942?
Ernst Mayr
It defines species as 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
Selection and drift act independently on the separated populations until they can no longer interbreed.
Q 19What term describes speciation in a small isolated population, driven by the founder effect?
Peripatric
The isolated group is much smaller than the parent population, so inbreeding boosts selection on homozygotes.
Q 20The grass Anthoxanthum odoratum undergoes parapatric speciation in response to what?
Metal pollution from mines
Metal-tolerant plants shifted their flowering time until they were reproductively isolated from their neighbours.
The ongoing Holocene extinction runs at 100 to 1,000 times the background rate.
Q 24Roughly what proportion of all species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct?
More than 99%
That is over five billion species; only about 1.9 million living ones have been named.
Q 25What does the acronym LUCA stand for?
Last universal common ancestor
It lived roughly 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago; in 2016 scientists identified 355 of its genes.
Q 26How old is the Earth?
About 4.54 billion years
The earliest undisputed evidence of life is at least 3.5 billion years old, from the Eoarchean.
Q 27Where were microbial mat fossils found in 3.48-billion-year-old sandstone?
Western Australia
Graphite of biological origin in 3.7-billion-year-old rocks comes from Greenland.
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
Later engulfment of bacteria produced mitochondria, and of cyanobacteria-like cells produced chloroplasts.
Q 30The Cambrian explosion, in which most modern animal types appeared, began roughly how long ago?
539 million years
The burst of diversity took about 10 million years; rising atmospheric oxygen is one proposed trigger.