Q 01/05

Which US president, who named the fossil ground sloth Megalonyx, hoped Lewis and Clark would find living mastodons?

A) George Washington

B) Thomas Jefferson

C) John Adams

D) James Madison

Answer · why

B) Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson first took the giant-clawed Megalonyx for an enormous lion-like cat when he studied its bones in the 1790s. One species of the sloth ...

Q 02/05

Which Ice Age giant survived on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago, after Egypt's Great Pyramid was built?

A) Cave bear

B) Woolly rhinoceros

C) Irish elk

D) Woolly mammoth

Answer · why

D) Woolly mammoth

The woolly mammoth held on at Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, until around 2000 BCE. Those last animals were smaller than mainland herds but not ...

Q 03/05

Which dinosaur's tail spikes are called a thagomizer, a name invented as a joke in a Far Side cartoon?

A) Ankylosaurus

B) Triceratops

C) Stegosaurus

D) Diplodocus

Answer · why

C) Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus carried four tail spikes, and cartoonist Gary Larson gave them a name in a 1982 strip. Scientists liked the joke enough that the word crep...

Q 04/05

Which fossil hunter from Lyme Regis helped unearth the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton at age twelve?

A) Mary Anning

B) Mary Leakey

C) Marie Stopes

D) Dorothea Bate

Answer · why

A) Mary Anning

Mary Anning made her living selling fossils from the Dorset cliffs, and a king of Saxony bought an ichthyosaur skeleton from her shop in 1844.

Q 05/05

Which fish, thought to have died out with the dinosaurs, turned up alive in a fisherman's catch off South Africa?

A) Sturgeon

B) Coelacanth

C) Alligator gar

D) Lungfish

Answer · why

B) Coelacanth

The coelacanth was known only from fossils until museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer spotted one in a 1938 catch. Its genus, Latimeria, is named...