You Find the Frozen Remains of a Woolly Mammoth in an Alaskan

question 66

Multiple Choice

You find the frozen remains of a woolly mammoth in an Alaskan glacier. You analyze a bit of the tusk and find that its 14C:12C ratio is about one-fourth (25%) of the baseline level typically found in living organisms. Given that the half-life of 14C is 5,730 years, when did the mammoth die?

• A) 5,730 years ago
• B) about 12,000 years ago
• C) at least 25,000 years ago
• D) about 75,000 years ago

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Definitions:

Macroevolution

Large-scale evolutionary events over long time spans. Macroevolution results in phenotypic changes in populations that are significant enough to warrant their placement in taxonomic groups at the species level and higher. Compare with microevolution.

Adaptive Radiation

The rapid diversification of a single ancestor species into a wide variety of forms with different ecological niches.

Ancestral Species

A species from which two or more species evolved, serving as a common predecessor in the evolutionary tree.

Closely Related

Describes organisms or entities that share a recent common ancestor or have a high degree of genetic similarity, often within the same family or genus.