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Changing Earth
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Mold | A fossil formed when an animal,plant,or other organism dies and is covered by sediment it flesh decays and bones deteriorate due to chemical reactions, and a cavity remains below the ground surface. |
| Cast | A fossil formed when an animal, plant, or other organism dies, its flesh decays and bones deteriorate due to chemical reactions; minerals gradually enter into the cavity, resulting in a cast, which is in the general form of the original organism. |
| Carbon Film | Carbon films are thin film coatings which consist predominantly of the chemical element carbon. They include plasma polymer films, amorphous carbon films(diamond-like carbon, DLC), CVD diamond films as well as graphite films. |
| Trace Fossil | a fossil of a footprint, trail, burrow, or other trace of an animal rather than of the animal itself. |
| Preserved Remains | The definition of a fossil is the preserved remains of a prehistoric organism or is slang for someone or something that is old and outdated. An example of a fossil is the preserved remains from a prehistoric organism that have been preserved inside rock. |
| Catastrophism | idea that conditions and organisms on Earth change in quick,violent events. |
| Uniformitarianism | states that geologic processes that occur today are similar to those that have occurred in the past |
| Stratigraphy | the branch of geology that studies the order and relative age of rock/soil layers on Earth |
| Law of Superposition | states that the youngest layer of Earth are located on the surface and as you go deeper into the earth,the layers get older |
| Relative age | is a way of describing how old something is not by using numbers but by using a comparison |
| index fossil | fossil of an organism that was alive for only a short period of time, were abundant and widespread geographically; scientists can use these to assign dates to rock layers |
| absolute age | the numerical age in years of an object |
| radiometric dating | process to determine absolute age of an object isotopes break down into other isotopes and particles |
| halflife | time it takes for half the atoms of an isotope to decay |