click below
click below
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Chapter 10 Vocab
Question | Answer |
---|---|
fossils | are the preserved remains or evidence of ancient living things |
catastrophism | is the idea that conditions and organisms on Eath change in quick violent events |
uniformitarianism | states that geologic processes that occur today are similar to those that have occured in the past |
carbon film | is the fossilied carbon outline of an organism or part of an organism |
mold | is the impression in a rock left by an ancient organism |
cast | is a fossil copy of an organism made when a mold of the organism is filled with sediment or mineral deposits |
trace fossil | is the preserved evidence of the activity of an organism |
paleontologists | scientists who study fossils |
relative age | is the age of rocks and geologic features compared with other rocks and features nearby |
superposition | is the princithat in undistured rock layers, the oldest rocks are on the bottom |
inclusion | a piece of an older rock that becomes part of a new rock |
unconformity | is a surface where rock has eroded away, producing a break, or a gap, in the rock record |
correlation | matching rocks and fossils from separate locations |
index fossils | represent species that existed on Earth for a short lenght of time, were abundant, and inhabited many locations |
absolute age | to mean the numerical age, in years, of a rock or object |
istopes | are atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons |
radioactive decay | is the process by which an unstable element naturally changes into another element that is stable |
half-life | is the time required for half of the parent isotopes to decay into daughter isotoper |