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Mead Hall
Pangea
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| How long ago did Earth's environment begin to form | 4.6 billion years ago |
| what is geology | the study of earth's formation and structure |
| what allows us to understand the evolution of life on Earth | evidence from rocks and fossils |
| who was the Danish anatomist who figured out that shark teeth were tonguestones | Nicholas Steno |
| what is the "rock cycle" | the process of rock formation and recycling |
| sedimentary rock | sediments that are washed from the land and deposited on a horizontal layer |
| superposition | layers of sedimentary rock that the lowest layers were the earliest to be deposited |
| Relative Dating | a method of sequencing events in the order of which they happened |
| Paleontologist | a scientist that studies fossils |
| Pangea | an ancient supercontinent that broke apart to form today's continents in Permian era |
| cross-cutting relationships | a vein of rock that cuts across the rock's layers is younger than the layers |
| inclusions | pieces of rocks that are inside rocks |
| faunal succession | fossils can be used to identify the relative age of layers of sedimentary rock |
| who theorized that the continents had been part of a great landmass | Alfred Wegener |
| plate tectonics | the theory how the continents move |
| lithospheric plates | giant pieces of solid rock on Earth's surface, their movement cause the continents to move |
| how many lithospheric plates | there are seven |
| what does the distribution of fossils tell us around the world | that the continents were once joined |
| how do plate tectonics result in the formation of new species | new species were formed when populations were geographically operated species were no longer able o interbreed, so species evolved different adaptations |
| geologic time scale | a model of the history of life on earth, |
| eras | are determined but the dominant life forms that were present at the time |
| periods | smaller blocks within eras based on types of fossils found |
| ozone layer | blocked harmful radiation from the sun, allowing life life to move out of the water and onto dry land |
| when did the first eukaryotic cells appear | during the Precambrian era, about 2 billion years ago |
| Paleozoic era | fossils include trilobites, snails, clams, and corals, fishes with backbones appeared, plants and air breathing animals began to populate the earth |
| Mesozoic era | age of reptiles included Jurassic era, first birds appeared and then suddenly extinct |
| Cenozoic era | is still on going mammals first appeared |
| Quaternary period | the first modern humans appeared 40,000 years ago. |
| Masses extinctions | periods of large-scale extinction |
| which era had the biggest mass extinction | the paleozoic era, known as the Permian extinction, possibly by a massive volcano |
| Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction | happened about 65 million years ago ending the Mesozoic era, many scientists believe a large asteroid hit the earth. The dinosaurs became extinct at this point |
| sixth mass extinction | many species today have become extinct, mainly because of human impact, an example is the California condor |
| absolute dating | a method of estimating the age of a rock sample in years |
| half-life | the amount of time it takes for half of the unstable atoms in a sample to decay |
| radioactive decay | the releasing of unstable atoms as strong forces begin to decay |
| Jurassic | dinosaur |
| Tertiary | wooly mammoth |
| Quaternary | humans |
| precambrian | archaebacteria |
| Devonian | plants |
| silurian | fishes with backbones |
Created by:
tbostwick
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