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Chapter 10
Clue to Earth's Past
Question | Answer |
---|---|
The personal remains or evidence of ancient living things | Fossils |
The idea that conditions and organisms on Earth change in quick, violent events | Catastrophism |
The principle that states that geologic processes that occur today are similar to those that have occurred in the past | Uniformitarianism |
The fossilized carbon outline of an organism or part of an organism | Carbon film |
The impression in a rock left by an ancient organism | Mold |
A fossil copy of an organism made when a mold of the organism is filled with sediment or mineral deposits | Cast |
the preserved evidence of the activity of an organism | Trace fossil |
Scientist who study fossils is called | Paleontologist |
The of rocks and geologic features compared with other rocks and features nearby | Relative age |
The principle that in undisturbed rock layers, the oldest rocks are on the bottom | Superposition |
A piece of an older rock that becomes part of a new rock is called | Inclusion |
A surface where rock has eroded away, producing a break, or gap, in the rock record | unconformity |
Matching rocks and fossils from separate location is called | Correlation |
Represent species that existed on Earth for a short length of time, were abundant, and inhabited many locations | Index fossils |
To mean the numeral age, in year, of a rock | Absolute age |
Atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons | Isotopes |
The process by which an unstable element naturally changes into another element that is stable | Radioactive decay |
The time required for half of the parent isotopes | Half-life |