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chapter 10 vocab
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Fossils | Are the preserved remains or evidence of ancient living things |
| Catastrophism | Is the 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 |
| Carbon film | Is the fossilized carbon outline of an organism or part of an organism |
| Mold | Is the impression in a rock left by an ancient organism |
| Cast | Is a fossil copy of an organism made when a mold of the organism is filled with sediment or mineral deposits |
| Trace Fossil | Is the preserved evidence of the activity of an organism |
| Paleontologists | Scientists who study fossils |
| Relative Age | Is the age of rocks and geologic features compared with other rocks and the features nearby |
| Superposition | Is the principle that in undisturbed rock layers, the oldest rocks are on the bottom |
| Inclusion | A piece of an older rock that becomes part of a new rock |
| Unconformity | Is a surface where rock has eroded away, producing a break, or gap, in the rock record |
| correlation | Matching rock and fossils from separate locations |
| Index fossils | Represent species that existed o Earth for a short length of time, were abundant, and inhabited many locations |
| Absolute age | To mean the numerical age, in years, of a rock or object |
| Isotopes | Are atoms of the same element that have different number of neutrons |
| Radioactive decay | Is the process by which an unstable element naturally changes into another element that is stable |
| Half-life | Is the time required for half of the parent isotopes to decay into daughter isotopes |