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Science Chapter 10
vocab.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is a fossil? | Preserved remains or evidence of ancient living things. |
| What is catastrophism? | The idea that conditions and organisms on Earth change in quick, violent events. |
| What is uniformitarianism? | A principle that states that geologic processes that occur today are similar to those to those that have occurred in the past. |
| What is carbon film? | The fossilized carbon outline of an organism or part of an organism. |
| What is a mold? | The impression in a rock left by an ancient organism. |
| What is a trace fossil? | The preserved evidence of the activity of an organism. |
| What is a paleontologist? | Scientists who study fossils. |
| What is relative age? | The age of rocks and geologic features compared with other rocks and features nearby. |
| What is superpostion? | The principle that in undisturbed rock layers, the oldeest rocks are on the bottom. |
| What is inclusion? | A piece of an older rock that becomes part of a new rock. |
| What is unconformity? | A surface where rock has eroded away, producing a break in the rock record. |
| What is correlation? | Matching rocks and fossils from separate locations. |
| What is index fossils? | Represents species that existed on Earth for a short length of time. |
| What is absolute age? | Mean the numericsl age, in years, of a rock or object. |
| What is isotopes? | Atoms of the same elemnt that have different numbers of neutrons. |
| What is radioactive decay? | The process by which an unstavle element naturally changes into another element that is stable. |
| What is a half-life? | The time required for half of the parent isotopes to decay into daughter isotopes. |