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 A105 Human Origins and Prehistory
A105 Quiz 3 Answer Key

Correct answers to the questions are italicized.  The answers given for the fill in the blank questions are the most direct phrasing; many of you received credit for answers that were worded differently.

1. The Piltdown fraud consisted of a human skull and the jaw of what other primate?
     orangutan
 
2. How can we characterize the evolutionary position of the robust australopithecines?
     A. they are the ancestors of modern chimpanzees
     B. they were an evolutionary dead-end, becoming extinct with no descendants
     C. they are the ancestors of later hominids like H. erectus
     D. they now work as Hollywood stuntmen/women

3. When did the first stone tools appear?
    A. 2.5 million years ago
    B. 1.8 million years ago
    C. 4.3 million years ago
    D. 100,000 years ago

4. What is the name of the site where the earliest stone tools were found?
    A. Olduvai
    B. Laetoli
    C. Gona
    D. Sterkfontein

5. Oldowan tools include spheroids, choppers, and which of these?
    A. handaxes
    B. cleavers
    C. gun flints
    D. sharp flakes

6. Name one of the two distinctive tools of the Acheulean industry.
                            Handaxe or cleaver    

7. The Oldowan is most often assumed to be the work of which hominid?
     A. Australopithecus anamensis
     B. Homo habilis
     C. Australopithecus afarensis
     D. Neanderthals

8.  Stone tool cutmarks have been found on animal bones.  Which marks suggest butchery (removal of limbs)?
    A. the ones on the skull
    B. the ones on the middle of long bone shafts
    C. the ones nearest carnivore tooth marks
    D. the ones near the joints.

9. The famous hominid footprints at Laetoli are thought to have been made by what hominid?
    A. Neanderthals
    B. A. afarensis
    C. A. anamensis
    D. Homo ergaster

10. Which chronometric (absolute) dating method must be done on organic material?
      Radiocarbon/ C-14 dating

11. Which of these dating methods can be used to date the most ancient hominid sites?
    A. potassium-argon (K/Ar)
    B. radiocarbon
    C. tree ring dating
    D. counting varves

12. Dating techniques that provide dates in years are called chronometric methods.  Other methods, used at sites that lack datable materials, can sometimes be dated by faunal correlation, an example of what kind of dating technique?
       Relative dating or stratigraphic dating were both accepted; the first is the best answer.

13. What is the most important geologic principle that was adopted by archaeologists to explain their sites?
      Principle of Superposition

14. Which of these hominids IS NOT a robust australopithecine?
    A. A. aethiopicus
    B. A. robustus
    C. A. africanus
    D. A. boisei

15. There are three robust australopithecine species. Which one is found only in South Africa?
                  A. robustus

16. What dietary inference has been made concerning the robust australopithecines based on their cranial and dental characteristics?
   A. That they had a diet just like that of modern chimps
   B. That they were insectivorous
   C. That they were "chewing machines," who ate tough foods that required lots of grinding
   D. That they were almost entirely carnivorous (meat-eating)

17. When Dubois wanted to find human ancestors, he looked where Darwin and others had predicted they would be found.  Where was this?
    A. Africa
    B. Europe
    C. Australia
    D. Asia

18. Dubois' "Pithecanthropus" finds were initially dismissed as giant gibbons.  What species are they now known to belong to?
    A. Homo habilis
    B. Homo erectus
    C. Neanderthals
    D. Australopithecus anamensis