Geological Events
Events formed at convergent boundaries when continental plates collide.
What are mountains (or mountain ranges)?
Sphere including Earth's rocks and landforms.
What is the geosphere?
Continuous process of rock change.
What is the rock cycle?
This largest division of geologic time, lasting billions of years, is used to categorize Earth's history.
What is an eon?
This system encompasses all of Earth's water, in solid, liquid, and gaseous forms.
What is the hydrosphere?
Process where an oceanic plate slides beneath a continental plate at a convergent boundary.
What is subduction?
Sphere including all living organisms.
What is the biosphere?
Rock type often layered and may contain fossils.
What is sedimentary rock?
The Paleozoic Era ended with the largest mass extinction in Earth's history.
What is the Permian-Triassic extinction event?
This phenomenon, caused by the movement of molten metals within Earth's outer core, generates a protective field around the planet.
What is Earth's magnetic field?
Depressions in the ocean floor formed at subduction zones.
What are ocean basins or trenches?
Sphere encompassing all water on Earth.
What is the hydrosphere?
Three main rock types classified by formation.
What are igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks?
The discovery of these remains of ancient life in sedimentary rocks helps scientists reconstruct past environments and time periods.
What are fossils?
This phenomenon, caused by the movement of molten metals within Earth's outer core, generates a protective field around the planet.
What is Earth's magnetic field?
Pathway for igneous rock to become sedimentary rock.
What is: Uplift, weathering, erosion into sediment, compaction, and cementation?
Sphere of gases surrounding Earth.
What is the atmosphere?
Naturally occurring solids with definite chemical composition, classified by testing physical properties.
What are minerals?
This dating method uses the decay of radioactive isotopes to determine the absolute age of rocks and fossils.
What is radiometric dating?
These underwater environments, like deep-sea hydrothermal vents, are unique examples of interactions between the geosphere and the hydrosphere, supporting chemosynthetic ecosystems.
What are hydrothermal vents?
Metamorphic rocks formed from shale under increasing heat and pressure.
What is slate, phyllite, schist, and then gneiss?
Making informed decisions about Earth's resources based on advantages and disadvantages
What is resource management (or conservation)?
Event caused by sudden energy release from plate movement.
What is an earthquake?
The discovery of these remains of ancient life in sedimentary rocks helps scientists reconstruct past environments and time periods.
What are fossils?
The formation of metamorphic rocks, a process influenced by heat and pressure, represents an interaction primarily between these two layers of Earth's internal structure.
What are the crust and the mantle (or the lithosphere and asthenosphere)?