Vocabulary
The numerical age, in years, of a rock or object.
What is absolute age?
A fossil copy of an organism is made when a mold of the organism is filled with sediment or mineral deposits.
What is a cast?
The age of rocks and geologic features compared with other nearby rocks and features:
a. relative age
b. trace fossil
c. superposition
What is relative age?
Scientist who studies fossils.
What is a paleontologist?
A Key bed is when part of the rock record is destroyed, and the erosional gap forms.
False. What is unconformity?
The preserved remains or evidence of past living organism.
What is fossil?
Atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons.
What is an isotope?
An example of a fossil with original preservation includes:
a. insect imbedded in amber
b. dinosaur footprint
b. mammoth in ice
What is an insect imbedded in amber?
A surface where the rock has eroded away, producing a break, or gap, in the rock record.
What is unconformity?
Uniformitarianism is the perserved evidence of the activitiy of an organism.
False. What is trace fossils?
The idea that conditions and organisms on Earth change in quick, violent events.
What is catastrophism?
The fossilized carbon outline of an organism or part of an organism.
What is carbon film?
Blank dating uses the properties of atoms in rocks and other objects to find their ages:
a. Atom aging
b. absolute age dating
c. Relative absolute dating
What is absolute age dating?
The principle is that in undisturbed rock layers, the oldest rocks are on the bottom.
What is superposition?
Coprolite is the hardened tree sap that fossils insects are preserved in.
False. What is amber?
A fossil representative of a species that existed on Earth for a short period, was abundant, and inhabited many locations.
What is an index fossil?
The time required for half of the amount of a radioactive parent element to decay into a stable daughter element.
What is half-life?
* DAILY DOUBLE
Index fossils are useful to geologists if the fossils:
a. have lived over a short period
b. are scarce
c. are not widely distributed geographically
What is a. have lived for a short period?
This characteristic of radioactive decay makes it useful for determining the absolute age of samples.
What is occurs at a constant rate?
A cast of a bee is an example of a trace fossil.
What is true?
The impression of an organism in a rock.
What is mold?
A piece of an older rock that becomes a part of a new rock.
What is inclusion?
The process by which an unstable element naturally changes into another element that is stable:
a. Relative age
b. superposition
c. radioactive decay
What is radioactive decay?
The principle states that geologic processes that occur today are similar to those that happened in the past.
What is uniformitarianism?
The oldest rock layer in an undisturbed rock sequence occurs at the bottom of the sequence.
What is true?