Q 01/05

Which Scottish scientist, author of the 1788 Theory of the Earth, is called the father of modern geology?

A) James Hutton

B) Charles Lyell

C) Roderick Murchison

D) William Smith

Answer · why

A) James Hutton

His angular unconformity at Siccar Point convinced visitors the Earth showed 'no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end'.

Q 02/05

What did Alfred Wegener name the single ancient landmass in his 1912 continental drift theory?

A) Gondwana

B) Rodinia

C) Laurasia

D) Pangaea

Answer · why

D) Pangaea

He first called it the 'Urkontinent'; the Greek name means 'all land'. He died on a Greenland expedition in 1930, decades before his idea was accepted...

Q 03/05

What was Alfred Wegener's field, which made geologists slow to accept continental drift?

A) Meteorology

B) Astronomy

C) Medicine

D) Chemistry

Answer · why

A) Meteorology

He was a climatologist and meteorologist who made four Greenland expeditions; acceptance came only after seafloor spreading was confirmed in the 1960s...

Q 04/05

What is the accepted age of the Earth, in billions of years?

A) 3.8

B) 4.54

C) 6.2

D) 13.8

Answer · why

B) 4.54

Clair Patterson fixed it in 1956 by uranium-lead dating the Canyon Diablo meteorite, since Earth's own oldest rocks have been recycled.

Q 05/05

Earth's oldest known minerals, 4.4-billion-year-old zircons, come from the Jack Hills of which country?

A) Canada

B) Australia

C) South Africa

D) Greenland

Answer · why

B) Australia

They are older than any surviving rock; the oldest intact rocks, the Acasta Gneiss of Canada, are about 4.03 billion years old.