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Unit 7
Unit 7 Earth's history
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| 1. Uniformitarianism | a principle that geologic processes that occured in the past can be explained by current geologic processes |
| 2. Fossil | the trace or remains of an organism that lived long ago, most commonly preserved in sedimentary rock |
| 3. Trace fossil | a fossilized structure, such as a footprint or a coprolite, that formed in sedimentary rock by animal activity on or within soft sediment |
| 4. Climate | the weather conditions in an area over a long period of time |
| 5. Ice core | a long cylinder of ice obtained from drilling through ice caps or ice sheets: used to study past climates |
| 6. Relative dating | any method of determining whether an event or object is older r younger than other events or objects |
| 7. Superposition | a principle that states that younger rocks lie above olders rocks if the layers have not been disturbed |
| 8. Unconformity | a break in the geologic record created when rock layers are eroded or when sediment is not deposited for a long period of time |
| 9. Geologic column | an ordered arrangment of rock layers that is based on the relative ages of the rocks and in which the oldest rocks are at the bottom |
| 10. Absoulute dating | any method of measuring the age of an event or object in years |
| 11. Radioactive decay | the process in which a radioactive isotope tends to break down into a stable isotope of the same element or another element |
| 12. Half-life | the time required for a half of a sample of a radioactive isotope to break down by radioactive decay to form a daughter isotope |
| 13. Radiometric dating | a method of determining the absolute age of an object by comparing the relative percentages of a radioactive parent isotope and a stable daughter isotope |
| 14 |