The Upper Forelimbs of Humans and Bats Have Fairly Similar

question 53

Multiple Choice

The upper forelimbs of humans and bats have fairly similar skeletal structures, whereas the corresponding bones in whales have very different shapes and proportions. However, genetic data suggest that all three kinds of organisms diverged from a common ancestor at about the same time. Which of the following is the most likely explanation for these data?

• A) Humans and bats evolved by natural selection, and whales evolved by Lamarckian mechanisms.
• B) Forelimb evolution was adaptive in people and bats, but not in whales.
• C) Natural selection in an aquatic environment resulted in significant changes to whale forelimb anatomy.
• D) Genes mutate faster in whales than in humans or bats.
• E) Whales are not properly classified as mammals.

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Definitions:

Examples

Examples are specific instances or items that are representative of a general case or category, often used to illustrate a point or explain a concept.

Normally Distributed

A distribution that is symmetric about the mean, showing that data near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean.

Standard Deviation

A measure of the dispersion or spread of a set of numbers, indicating how much the individual numbers differ from the mean of the set.

Mean

The average of a set of numbers, calculated by dividing the sum of the values by the count of numbers.