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Ch. 13 Vocab.MPS8
Chapter 13 vocab words
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Fossil | The remains, imprints, or traces of prehistoric organisms. |
| What have fossils helped scientists do? | Determine when life began, where life was at, and how organisms lived. |
| What must happen to become a fossil? | Must be protected from scavengers and microorganisms(bacteria), and have hard parts. |
| What kind of burial is helpful to create fossils? | Quick burial, without outside forces being able to affect it. |
| Mineral replacement | Water containing a dissolved mineral dissolves the original substance and leaves the mineral in it's place making a rock-like substance. |
| Permineralized remains | Fossils in with the space inside are filled with minerals from groundwater. Ex. mammoth tooth. |
| Carbon Film | Pressure from overlying sediments squeeze gases and liquids from the organism leaving only a thin black residue in the silhouette of the organism. |
| Coal | Solid fossil fuel made of plant material in swamps. |
| Oil | Liquid fossil fuel made of marine microscopic organisms. |
| Natural gas | Gaseous fossil fuel found above both coal and oil deposits. Used to heat homes. |
| Mold | Hard part has dissolved leaving a cavity behind where the organism used to be. |
| Cast | Mineral-rich liquid or other sediments fill the cavity left by the organism, creating a rock copy similar to the original organism. |
| Original remains | The entire organism has been preserve throughout time; amber, frozen, tar pits, etc.. |
| Trace fossils | Fossils which show evidence that something once lived or was found in the area. |
| Index fossils | Remains of species that existed on Earth for relatively short periods of time, were abundant, and were widespread geographically. |
| Principle of Superposition | Idea that in undisturbed layers of rock, the youngest rocks are making up the top layers and the rock age gets older the farther you go down. |
| Relative age of rocks | Determining the rock age by comparing it to the other things around it. |
| Unconformities | Gaps in the rock sequence. |
| Angular unconformities | Horizontal layers have folded, tilted, etc... and then new horizontal layers have been deposited on top of the folded rock layers. |
| Disconformities | Horizontal layers have been eroded away, new materials is put on top of these layers horizontally creating a gap in the rock layers. |
| Nonconformities | A metamorphic or igneous rock formation is lifted up and eroded. Sedimentary rock layers are then deposited on top of this erosion. |
| Rock correlation | Using fossils of the same kind and rock type to show that areas from distances apart are part of the same deposit. |
| Absolute age of rock | Using radioactive properties in rocks to determine the rock age. |
| Radioactive decay | The process of an unstable isotope breaking down into a more stable element. |
| Half-life | Amount of time it takes half of an isotope to break down into it's stable daughter product. |
| Carbon half-life | 5,730 years |
| Radiometric dating | The process of using half-lives of radioactive materials to determine the ages of rocks. |
| Radiocarbon dating | Using Carbon-14 to determine the age of fossils; only good to about 75,000 years. |
| Principle of Uniformitarianism | Principle that states that Earth's processes of today are similar to those that occurred in the past. |
| James Hutton | Scottish scientist who presented the principle of uniformitarianism because he observed how slowly the rock formations changed over time. |
Created by:
lmcclapper
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