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Berm Earth History
15 terms from differentiated activities
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| fossil | trace or remains of a plant or an animal in sedimentary rock |
| relative age | age of an object compared with the ages of other objects |
| absolute age | actual age of an object. the exact age of a fossil or rock layer |
| evolution theory | change of living things over time |
| extinction | the condition of an entire species becoming extinguished or dead |
| uniformitarianism | theory that geologic processes at work in the present were also at work in the past |
| gastrolith | fossilized stone found within the digestive system of a dinosaur or other reptile |
| coprolite | fossilized waste material from an animal |
| era | largest unit of geologic time. The Geologic Column is broken down into 4 of these. |
| law of superposition | principle that a sedimentary rock layer is older than the layers above it (when a volcano cuts through the rock layers, it is now the youngest layer) |
| law of crosscutting relationships | principle that a fault or intrusion is always younger than the rock layers it cuts through |
| half-life | time required for half the mass of a radioactive element to decay into its daughter elements |
| correlation | naming two layers of rock as a match, therefore saying that they were laid down at the same time |
| radioactive decay | the radioactive process in which a nucleus undergoes spontaneous transformation into one or more different nuclei and simultaneously emits radiation, loses electrons, or undergoes fission. |
| geologic column | The chart of Earth's History that organizes the eras, period, and epochs. |
| trace fossil | You know that something has been there, but there are no "remains." The best example of this is a dinosaur footprint. |
| petrification | Fossils formed when the actual cells are replaced with minerals. The best example of this is petrified wood. |
| amber | Sticky sap that traps insects and then hardens into rock |
| disconformity | An ocean layer (with fish & marine skeletons) that has been uplifted above the water level. |
| mummification | Preservation of fossils by drying, wrapping, bottling the organs, etc. |
| varve | Layers in the bottom of a lake that tell the story of the climate over the years. (like a core sample) |
| period | an era is broken down into a |
| Cenozoic | the most recent era |
| Precambrian | the oldest era, formation of the Earth |
| epoch | a period is broken down into an |
| vertebrate | animals with a true backbone |
| gastrolith | stones in the digestive tract that help grind the food down |
| angular unconformity | layers of rock that are set at an angle |
| index fossil | a fossil that points to the age of an unknown fossil |
Created by:
kzehr
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