In this study guide, I have tried to be comprehensive and include everything that I could possibly include on the midterm. Some of these concepts are much more important than others, but I leave it to you to decide where to focus your efforts (the more time I spent on something in class, the more important I think it is and the more likely it will be to show up on the midterm). My advice would be to start with Cladogram 2 and 3 (and review 1) and make sure you are still familiar with how to interpret cladograms, and then proceed to the other things listed below.
STUFF FROM BEFORE THE MIDTERM:
- About 1/3 of the final will deal with material from the first half of the class, and which was included on the midterm study guide. I do not repeat any of this material here—it would behoove you to review that study guide as well!
- Questions on material from the first half of the class will focus on the most important points (as I see them) rather than minor details.
- While I think the midterm gave you a good idea of the kinds of questions I like to ask and the sorts of things I think are important, most of the questions dealing with this material will be new rather than just repeated from the midterm.
Concepts to understand:
- Sexual selection
- Surface area vs. volume: which one increases faster as length increases, and why? Why is
this important?
- Greenhouse effect: what is it, what gases are primarily responsible for it?
Terms to know (definitions, importance for this class):
- Sexual dimorphism
- Melanosome
- Lithosphere
- Plate tectonics
- Mass extinction
- Deccan Traps
- Chicxulub
- Pangaea
Clades to know (who is included, what they are like, where they fall in the tree): • Ornithischia
- Thyreophora
- Stegosaurians
- Ankylosaurians • Ankylosaurids • Nodosaurids
- Cerapods
- Ornithopods
- Hadrosaurids
- Pachycephalosaurids • Ceratopsians
- Psittacosaurids
- Ceratopsids
- Sauropodomorphs
- Sauropods
- Diplodocids
- Macronarians
- Brachiosaurids
- Titanosaurians
- Theropods
- Ceratosaurians
- Tetanurans
- Megalosaurians
- Allosaurians
- Coelurosaurs
- Tyrannosauroids
- Compsognathids
- Ornithomimosaurs • Maniraptors
- Alvarezsaurids
- Therizinosaurs
- Oviraptors
- Paraves
- Dromaeosaurids
- Troodontids
- Scansoriopterygids
- Avialians
- Neornithines
- Palaeognaths
- Neognaths
- Genera to know (what are they like, where they fall in the tree; some are included on Cladograms 2 and 3, others are included within one or another clade on those cladograms):
- Iguanodon
- Protoceratops • Triceratops
- Spinosaurus
- Tyrannosaurus • Archaeopteryx • Velociraptor
- Note that I do not expect you to memorize all of the other genera and clades listed on Cladogram 4 (just the stuff in non-black colors).
Paraphyletic groups to know (who is included, where they fall in the tree; the exclusion of which group makes them paraphyletic):
- “Early ornithischians”
- “Early thyreophorans”
- “Early ornithopods”
- “Prosauropods”
- “Early theropods”
Evolutionary novelties to know (what they are, their biological significance, where they evolved in the tree, if anyone has lost them, if they have been convergently evolved multiple times):
- Predentary bone
- Dermal armor (osteoderms)
- Armor plates
- Dorsal shield of fused armor
- Tail club
- Diastema
- Kinetic skull
- Dental batteries
- Huge nasal passages
- Thick dome on skull
- Shelf along back of skull
- Rostral bone
- Frill on skull
- Horns
- Long neck
- Small head
- Thumb claw
- Columnar limbs
- Nasal openings on top of skull
- Longer neck
- Smaller head
- Knife-like teeth
- Hollow bones
- Fused clavicles (furcula or wishbone)
- Stiff tails
- Three-digit hands
- Semilunate carpal
- Long claw on toe 2
- Asymmetrical feathers
- Powered flight
- Pygostyle
- Carpometacarpus
- Keeled sternum
- Loss of teeth
Questions to answer:
- How can we test different hypotheses for the function of “bizarre structures” in dinosaurs?
- In general, what seem to be the main sorts of functions associated with “bizarre structures” in dinosaurs? (You don’t need to memorize every single example we talked about.)
- Is parental care widespread among archosaurs?
- What part of the pachycephalosaurid skull is most commonly found in the fossil record?
Why?
- In which groups of dinosaurs is there evidence for extensive social behavior?
- What are examples of features that are convergent between (at least some) ornithopods
and (at least some) ceratopsians?
- How do early sauropodomorphs differ from sauropods?
- How large were the largest sauropods? How can we tell?
- Why do large animals need to have different relative proportions than small animals?
- What are possible advantages for long necks in sauropods?
- How did sauropods cope with the weight of their very long necks?
- How does breathing in birds differ from the ancestral mode of breathing in tetrapods
(retained in humans)?
- What evidence is there that other dinosaurs breathed in a manner similar to that of birds?
- How does herbivory in sauropods differ from herbivory in many ornithischians?
- Why do many lineages of initially large animals evolve to become much smaller on
islands?
- How did sauropods defend themselves against predators?
- Relative to adults, were baby sauropods large or small?
- How do early tyrannosauroids differ from the more familiar Tyrannosaurus?
- How did the predatory habits of Tyrannosaurus differ from those of other theropods?
- Which theropod clades evolved herbivory or omnivory? What are some of the
adaptations they acquired to allow this?
- What are the different types of feathers? How do those of birds compare to those of other
dinosaurs?
- Did feathers originally evolve for flight? If not, what are other possible original functions?
- How can we determine the original colors of fossil feathers?
- What are different hypotheses to explain the evolutionary origin of flight?
- When are the oldest neornithine fossils from?
- What has caused the continents to change position over time?
- Broadly, how did the Earth’s geography change over the course of the Mesozoic? What
effects did this have upon dinosaurs?
- How is CO2 involved in chemical weathering? How does this stabilize the Earth’s climate over geological time?
- How can climate change over time? How were Mesozoic climates different from those of today?
- Are dinosaurs extinct?
- Were many dinosaur groups the only clades that went extinct at the end of the
Cretaceous?
- What evidence supports the hypothesis that a large meteor struck the Earth at the end of
the Cretaceous?
- What effects did this impact have (on the local region, on the global climate, on life)?
- Could the Deccan Traps have played an important role in the end-Cretaceous mass
extinction? How does the evidence support (or not) this hypothesis?
- Could the Chicxulub impact have played an important role in the end-Cretaceous mass
extinction? How does the evidence support (or not) this hypothesis?
- Why might neornithine birds have survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction when
other dinosaur clades did not?
- How do past and present human-caused extinctions compare with mass extinctions in the
past?
- How do temperature changes in the past relate to mass extinctions, and how do thesecompare to human-caused global warming?
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