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fossil7093b
fossil defintion
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| fossils | remains, imprints, or traces of prehistortic organisms once lived and how they lived |
| permineralized remains | fossils in which the spaces inside arte filled with minerals from groundwater |
| Carbon flim | thin flim of carbon residue preserved as a fossil |
| mold | a type of body fossil that forms in rock when an orangism with hard parts is buried,decays or dissolves, and leaves a cavity in the rock |
| cast | a type of body fossil that forms when crystals fill a mold or sediments wash into a mold and harden into rock |
| index fossil | remains of species that existed on Earth for a relatively short period of time, where abundant and widespread geographically, and can be used by geologists to assign the ages of rock layers. |
| principle of superposition | states that in undisturbed rock layers, the oldest rocks are on the bottom and the rocks become progessively younger toward the top. |
| relative age | the age of something compared with other things. |
| unconformity | gap in the rock layer that is due to erosion or periods without any deposition. |
| absolute age | age, in years, of a rock or other object; can be determined by using properties of the atoms that make up materials. |
| radioactive decay | process in which some isotapes break down into other isotapes particles. |
| half-life | time it takes for half the atoms of an isotape to decay. |
| uniformitarianism | principle stating that Earth processes occuring today are similar to those that occured in the past. |
| radiometric dating | process used to calculate the absolute age of rock by measuring the ratio of parent isotape to daughter product in a mineral and knowing the half-life of the parent. |