UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The core bends P waves sharply and stops S waves altogether, so a belt of the Earth surface receives neither type of wave from a given earthquake.

Granite forms when magma cools slowly deep below the surface, which gives the crystals time to grow, so the rock is coarse and speckled.

It marks the change from the molten outer core to the solid inner core, and is named after Inge Lehmann, who deduced from the behaviour of earthquake waves that the innermost part of the planet is solid.

Almost half the weight of the crust, about 46.6 per cent, is oxygen, because it is locked into the silicate minerals of which nearly all crustal rocks are made rather than existing as free gas.

They are built up layer by layer as sediment settles over the remains of living things and hardens gently, so shells, bones and plant matter survive as fossils.

The Deccan Trap was formed by vast fissure eruptions in which lava spread over the surface and cooled quickly, giving a fine-grained extrusive igneous rock, basalt.

Limestone is a sedimentary rock made largely of calcium carbonate, and when heat and pressure recrystallise it without melting it, the result is marble, the stone used in the Taj Mahal and in the Dilwara temples.

They are transverse waves, in which particles vibrate at right angles to the direction of travel, and such motion cannot be sustained in a fluid, so S waves die out at the outer core.

Named after the Croatian seismologist who noticed that earthquake waves suddenly speed up at a certain depth, it marks the base of the crust and the top of the mantle, and is commonly shortened to the Moho.

The Desert National Park, spread over sand dunes and open grassland near Jaisalmer and Barmer, is the best known habitat of this tall, heavy ground bird, whose numbers have fallen sharply and which is the state bird of Rajasthan.

In a national park the whole ecosystem is protected, rights are settled before the area is notified, grazing and cultivation are prohibited and the boundary cannot be altered except through a resolution of the state legislature.

It added two categories beyond the national park and the sanctuary: a conservation reserve, usually on state land adjoining a protected area and meant to guard a corridor between habitats, and a community reserve, on private or community land where the people themselves agree to protect wildlife.

Hemis lies in the cold, high altitude desert of Ladakh, covers a very large stretch of mountain terrain, and is the best known habitat of the snow leopard, along with the bharal and the Tibetan wolf.

Silent Valley lies in the Nilgiri hills of Kerala and protects one of the last stretches of undisturbed tropical evergreen forest in the Western Ghats, whose best known resident is the lion-tailed macaque.

Dachigam lies close to Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir and is the last stronghold of this deer, which moves between the upper and lower parts of the park with the seasons.

Keoladeo Ghana in Rajasthan is a shallow wetland created long ago as a duck shooting reserve of the rulers of Bharatpur, and it now shelters large numbers of resident and migratory birds every winter; it is a World Heritage Site.

It is the law under which a state government notifies a national park or a sanctuary, under which species are placed in schedules according to the protection they need, and under which hunting of protected animals is prohibited.

Project Tiger was launched a year after the Wild Life Protection Act came into force, and it created tiger reserves in which the core area is kept free of human activity while a buffer area allows regulated use; the National Tiger Conservation Authority now oversees the programme.

Kaziranga lies on the floodplain of the Brahmaputra in Assam, where tall elephant grass and seasonal flooding suit the rhinoceros, and the park is inscribed as a natural World Heritage Site.

Gir, in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, is the only place where the Asiatic lion survives in the wild, and its dry deciduous forest and scrub make the habitat that keeps the population alive.