Q10. Who proposed the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics?
[UP LT Grade Teacher (Biology), 2018]
(A) August Weismann
(B) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
(C) Louis Pasteur
(D) Charles Darwin
Answer: (B) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Explanation: Lamarck argued that characters acquired through use, disuse or need could be transmitted to descendants. Weismann later emphasised germ-line continuity, while modern genetics distinguishes changes to body tissues from inherited DNA differences. Darwin developed a separate natural-selection mechanism.
Q9. Studies of human evolution indicate that modern humans originated on which continent?
[RRB ALP CBT I, 31 August 2018, Shift 2]
(A) Western Asia
(B) America
(C) Central Asia
(D) Africa
Answer: (D) Africa
Explanation: Genetic studies and early Homo sapiens fossils support an African origin of our species. Modern humans later dispersed across the world and interbred with some archaic human groups. The exact pattern and timing of these dispersals continue to be refined by evidence.
Q8. Which geological era is widely called the Age of Reptiles?
[UPPSC GIC Lecturer Zoology, 2017]
(A) Palaeozoic
(B) Carboniferous
(C) Archaeozoic
(D) Mesozoic
Answer: (D) Mesozoic
Explanation: The Mesozoic Era, spanning approximately 252 to 66 million years ago, saw major diversification and terrestrial dominance of reptiles, especially dinosaurs. It comprises the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Numerous modern animal lineages also trace their origins to this interval.
Q7. Which writer of An Essay on the Principle of Population strongly influenced both Darwin and Wallace?
[WBCS Preliminary Examination, 2016]
(A) Erasmus Darwin
(B) Thomas Robert Malthus
(C) Vito Volterra
(D) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Answer: (B) Thomas Robert Malthus
Explanation: Thomas Malthus argued that populations can increase faster than available food supplies. Darwin and Wallace recognised the implication: more offspring exist than can survive, creating competition. Heritable differences affecting reproductive success can therefore accumulate through natural selection.
Q6. Which of the listed ancient hominids belongs to Homo sapiens?
[RRB NTPC Tier I, 2 April 2016, Shift 2]
(A) D (Proconsuls)
(B) B (Cro-Magnon)
(C) C (Neanderthal)
(D) A (Homo ergaster)
Answer: (B) B (Cro-Magnon)
Explanation: Cro-Magnon refers to early anatomically modern humans of Europe and is included within Homo sapiens. Neanderthals and Homo ergaster represent separate archaic human lineages or taxa, while Proconsul was an early ape, not a member of modern humanity.
Q5. Who is principally associated with the evolutionary theory of natural selection?
[WBCS Preliminary Examination, 2015]
(A) Gregor Mendel
(B) Charles Darwin
(C) Thomas Hunt Morgan
(D) None of these
Answer: (B) Charles Darwin
Explanation: Charles Darwin developed natural selection as a major explanation of how favourable inherited traits become more common. Alfred Russel Wallace independently proposed a similar mechanism. Mendel contributed inheritance laws, while Morgan’s experiments later linked heredity to chromosomes.
Q4. Who experimentally demonstrated that organic compounds relevant to life could form under simulated primitive conditions?
[UP TGT Biology, 2013]
(A) Alexander Oparin
(B) Thomas Huxley
(C) Stanley Miller
(D) J. B. S. Haldane
Answer: (C) Stanley Miller
Explanation: Stanley Miller’s 1953 experiment, conducted with Harold Urey, exposed a mixture of simple gases and water vapour to electrical sparks. Amino acids appeared among the products. This showed that prebiotic organic synthesis was plausible, not that life itself had been created.
Q3. Which sequence correctly orders these animal groups by evolutionary appearance?
[UPSC Civil Services Preliminary Examination, 2010]
(A) Otter – Tortoise – Shark
(B) Shark – Tortoise – Otter
(C) Tortoise – Shark – Otter
(D) Shark – Otter – Tortoise
Answer: (B) Shark – Tortoise – Otter
Explanation: Cartilaginous fishes have a much older evolutionary record than turtles, while otters belong to a relatively recent mammalian lineage. The broad progression is therefore shark, tortoise, otter. Such sequences refer to historical emergence, not direct descent between the living species.
Q2. In traditional evolutionary explanations, loss of limbs in snakes is attributed to which phenomenon?
[UPSC Civil Services Preliminary Examination, 2002]
(A) Use and disuse of organs
(B) Adaptation specifically to burrowing
(C) Natural selection
(D) Inheritance of acquired characteristics
Answer: (A) Use and disuse of organs
Explanation: The question invokes Lamarck’s historical principle of use and disuse, in which unused structures supposedly diminish over generations. Modern evolutionary studies instead explain limb reduction through inherited developmental changes and selection in snake ancestors. The answer reflects the paper’s classical-theory framing.
Q1. Which animal was identified as a connecting link between reptiles and mammals?
[WBCS Preliminary Examination, 2002]
(A) Peripatus
(B) Lungfish
(C) Duck-billed platypus
(D) Archaeopteryx
Answer: (C) Duck-billed platypus
Explanation: The platypus is an egg-laying mammal, displaying mammalian traits such as hair and milk production alongside an ancestral egg-laying mode. It is often used in textbooks to illustrate transitional characteristics. Archaeopteryx, in contrast, is a bird-lineage transitional fossil.
