Q 01/05

The word fossil comes from a Latin word meaning what?

A) Obtained by digging

B) Turned into stone

C) Very ancient thing

D) Buried animal bone

Answer · why

A) Obtained by digging

Classical Latin fossilis; the totality of fossils is called the fossil record.

Q 02/05

What is the scientific study of fossils called?

A) Archaeology

B) Petrology

C) Paleontology

D) Anthropology

Answer · why

C) Paleontology

It covers their age, how they formed and what they mean for evolution.

Q 03/05

Specimens are sometimes only counted as fossils once they are older than roughly what age?

A) 100 years

B) 10,000 years

C) 1,000 years

D) 1 million years

Answer · why

B) 10,000 years

Younger Holocene remains that are still too old to be modern are called subfossils.

Q 04/05

About how old are the oldest known fossils?

A) 540 million years

B) 65 million years

C) 1 billion years

D) 3.5 to 4.1 billion years

Answer · why

D) 3.5 to 4.1 billion years

The very oldest are chemical traces; the oldest stromatolites are over 3.4 billion years old.

Q 05/05

Which technique, developed in the early 20th century, gives rocks an absolute age?

A) Carbon mapping

B) Stratigraphic ordering

C) Magnetic sounding

D) Radiometric dating

Answer · why

D) Radiometric dating

Before it, superposition and biostratigraphy gave only relative ages.