Section 16 — NEET-Pattern Practice Questions (Evolution)
Evolution is one of the most dependable scoring chapters in NEET Biology — it is a consistently well-represented chapter, with multiple questions in most years. The examiners keep coming back to the same handful of ideas: the reducing early atmosphere and Miller's experiment, who said what (Lamarck vs Darwin vs de Vries), homology vs analogy, the classic examples of natural selection, and above all the Hardy–Weinberg equation, which turns up as a small calculation year after year.
This section is a focused 28-question NEET-pattern practice quiz covering the whole chapter — a mix of straight recall (who, what, how many years ago, how many cc), single-step Hardy–Weinberg calculations (, carriers, allele frequencies) and concept traps (divergent vs convergent, stabilising vs directional, mutation vs Darwinian variation).
Important note: These are NEET-pattern practice questions built on the recurring core concepts of this chapter. Do not treat them as exact authenticated year-tagged NEET PYQs unless each one is separately matched against an official NEET paper and year.
How to use: Treat this like a timed mock — give yourself about 30 minutes for all 28 questions (roughly a minute each). Attempt first, then read each explanation carefully. Use the Mini Memory Capsule below to spot the recurring question patterns before you begin.
Mini Memory Capsule — NEET's Top Hooks for This Chapter
Most NEET questions on Evolution fall into these recurring patterns:
1. Origin of the universe & earth — universe ≈ 20 billion years (NCERT; modern astronomy ~13.8); earth ≈ 4.5 billion years; life ≈ 4 billion years ago; early atmosphere was reducing (CH₄, NH₃, H₂, water vapour, no free oxygen).
2. Origin of life — Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation ("life from pre-existing life"); Oparin–Haldane proposed chemical evolution; Miller (1953) sealed CH₄, H₂, NH₃ + water vapour, ~800 °C, electric sparks → amino acids.
3. Who said what — Lamarck = use/disuse + inheritance of acquired characters (giraffe neck); Darwin & Wallace = natural selection + branching descent; de Vries = mutation/saltation (evening primrose). Fitness = reproductive fitness.
4. Evidences — homology = divergent evolution, common ancestry (whale/bat/cheetah/human forelimb; Bougainvillea thorn / Cucurbita tendril); analogy = convergent (butterfly vs bird wing; octopus vs mammal eye; sweet potato vs potato). Fossils = paleontological evidence.
5. Adaptive radiation — one ancestral stock → many forms in a new area: Darwin's finches (Galapagos) and Australian marsupials; two radiations converging = convergent (placental wolf vs Tasmanian/marsupial wolf).
6. Natural selection in action — industrial melanism (peppered moth = directional); antibiotic/pesticide resistance (anthropogenic).
7. Selection types — stabilising (middle favoured, e.g. human birth weight), directional (one extreme, peak shifts), disruptive (both extremes, peak splits).
8. Hardy–Weinberg — ; ; phenotype = ; 5 factors disturb it (gene flow, drift, mutation, recombination, selection); founder effect & bottleneck under drift.
9. Timeline — first cells ≈ 2000 mya; invertebrates ≈ 500 mya; dinosaurs vanished ≈ 65 mya; first land organisms were plants; Coelacanth (lobefin) caught 1938.
10. Human evolution — Dryopithecus/Ramapithecus (~15 mya) → Australopithecus → H. habilis (650–800 cc) → H. erectus (900 cc) → Neanderthal (1400 cc) → H. sapiens. Trend: brain size ↑, upright posture, tool use.