NewsTracker Answers for week of July 22, 2024

Q: Scientists believe the 16-foot creature that that washed up on a New Zealand beach this month is the carcass of the world’s rarest whale, so elusive that it has never been documented alive. Where are the remote islands of New Zealand in the South Pacific Ocean?

Circle the area on this map

Q: The spade-toothed whale carcass was quickly placed in a freezer, in such a state that scientists could dissect a specimen for the first time. Scientists confirmed the existence of the species in 2002 using skeletal remains found in New Zealand and in which South American nation on the South Pacific?

A. Argentina

B. Bolivia

C. Chile

D. Paraguay

C. Chile stretches 2,670 miles along the Pacific coast of South America. Argentina is on the Atlantic coast, while Bolivia and Paraguay are South America’s two landlocked countries.

Q: Scientists know very little about spade-toothed whales. The remains of only six of them have been found over 150 years. The latest was found on New Zealand’s South Island, the largest of more than 700 islands in the ...

A. Abyssal fan

B. Archipelago

C. Arroyo

D. Atoll

B. An archipelago - sometimes called an island group or island chain - is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands.

Q: Before dissecting the carcass, scientists will have to negotiate with New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people, who consider whales sacred. The Maori are part of which cultural-ethnic group of Pacific islanders?

A. Melanesians

B. Micronesians

C. Polynesians

C. The New Zealand islands were the last large habitable land to be settled by humans. Between about 1280 and 1350, Polynesians began settle in the islands and developed the distinctive Maori culture. The British began moving in around 1840, made the islands a colony, and started confiscating Maori land. New Zealand gained independence in 1947.

Q: Polynesia is made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered across a roughly triangular area of the Pacific. New Zealand is at the southeastern corner of the triangle, and Chile’’s Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is on the southwest corner. Which islands are at the northern corner of the Polynesian Triangle?

A. Hawaiian

B. Pitcarin

C. Samoan

D. Tongan

A. Polynesians reached the Hawaiian Islands between 940 and 1250. The Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians, and many people of Southeast Asia are all part of a larger group known as Austronesian-speaking peoples. They originated from a prehistoric seaborne migration from Taiwan about 3000 to 1500 BC. Some Austronesians migrated as far as Madagascar, an island on the east coast of Africa.