Bone Appétit!
Fossil Formation
Fossil Formation
What do you call a person who studies fossils?
A paleontologist.
This dating method compares which rock layer is older or younger, without giving an exact age.
What is relative dating?
Tiktaalik had fins like a fish but bones like an amphibian. What type of fossil is this?
What is a transition fossil?
A finch’s beak shape that helps it eat certain seeds is an example of this.
What is an adaptation?
The largest to smallest divisions of geologic time are called what?
Eons → Eras → Periods → Epochs?
This type of fossil forms when minerals replace all or part of an organism.
What is a petrified fossil?
Scientists use the decay of radioactive isotopes to determine the exact age of rocks and fossils.
What is absolute dating or radioactive dating?
The whale pelvis and human appendix are examples of these once-useful structures
What are vestigial structures?
True or False: Animals evolve when their wants change.
False: An animal adapts when its needs in its habitat change.
The “Age of Mammals,” when humans appeared, is known as this era.
What is the Cenozoic Era?
A fossil used to identify the age of rock layers because the organism lived for a short, known period of time across many locations is called a…
What is an index fossil?
This type of dating is used to find the age of organic materials, once living organisms but has a limit of about 64,000 years.
What is Carbon 14 Dating (C-14)
The human arm, whale flipper, and bat wing share similar bone structure but different functions.
What are homologous structures?
The process where organisms best suited to their environment survive and reproduce.
What is natural selection?
During this event at the start of the Paleozoic Era, life in the oceans rapidly diversified, leading to the appearance of most major animal groups. What was this event called?
What is the Cambrian Explosion?
Footprints, burrows, and leaf impressions are examples of this type of fossil.
What are trace fossils?
Radiometric dating of Earth’s oldest rocks and meteorites tells us our planet formed about this many billion years ago.
What is 4.6 billion years ago?
The study of early embryos showing similarities among vertebrates is called this.
What is embryology?
A species that cannot adapt to environmental change may face this outcome.
What is extinction?
Known as the “Age of Reptiles,” this era ended with a mass extinction believed to be caused by a large impact of an asteroid.
What is the Mesozoic Era?
One leaves its mark, the other fills it in — name this fossil duo that works together better than peanut butter and jelly.
What are mold and cast fossils?
A fossil contains a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 10,000 years. If a sample originally had 100 grams of the isotope but now only has 25 grams left, about how old is the fossil?
What is 20,000 years old? (Two half-lives have passed: 100 → 50 → 25 grams.)
Comparing this molecule between species shows how closely they are related.
What is DNA?
In the penguin dating scene, the one with the fluffier feathers gets more chicks—and more chicks that survive. What evolutionary concept explains this?
What is biological fitness?
Before Earth was cool (literally), it survived a cosmic beatdown of crashing asteroids and comets that helped shape its surface and deliver water—but there was no life on Earth yet, just chaos and craters. What was this rocky phase called?
What is the Late Heavy Bombardment?