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Earth Science Gr7
Chapter 10
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| fossil | the preserved remains or evidence of past living organisms |
| catastrophism | the idea that conditions and organisms on Earth change in quick, violent events |
| uniformitarianism | a principle stating that geologic processes that occur today are similar to those that occurred in the past |
| carbon film | the fossilized carbon outline of an organism or part of an organism |
| mold | the impression of an organism in a rock |
| cast | a fossil copy of an organism made when a mold of the organism is filled with sediment or mineral deposit |
| trace fossil | the preserved evidence of the activity of an organism |
| paleontologist | scientist that studies fossils |
| relative age | the age of rocks and geologic features compared with other nearby rocks and features |
| superposition | the principle that in undisturbed rock layers, the oldest rocks are on the bottom |
| inclusion | a piece of an older rock that becomes a part of a new rock |
| unconformity | a surface where rock has eroded away, producing a break or gap, in the rock record |
| correlation | a method used by geologists to fill in the missing gaps in an area's rock record by matching rocks and fossils from separate locations |
| index fossil | a fossil representative of a species that existed on Earth for a short period of time, was abundant, and inhabited many locations |
| absolute age | the numerical age, in years, of a rock or object |
| isotope | atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons |
| radioactive decay | the process by which an unstable element naturally changes into another element that is stable |
| half-life | the time required for half of the amount of a radioactive parent element to decay into a stable daughter element |