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LESSON 10
Mr. Pasone's Vocab, Meriyah Griffin
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Fossils | 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 | the principle that states that geologic processes that occur today are similar to those that have occurred in the past. |
| Carbon Film | 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 fossilized 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 |
| paleontologist | scientists who study fossils |
| Relative age | is the age of rocks and geologic features compared with other rocks and features nearby. |
| Superposition | 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 rocks and fossils from different locations. |
| Index fossils | represented species that lived on 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 | atoms of the same element that have different numbers 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 |