Layers
Provides evidence for the long history of the Earth and for the long history of changing life forms whose remains are found in the rocks.
What are sedimentary rock layers, or the fossil record.
can be used to help determine the relative age of rock layers
What are 'index fossils'
form when mud and sand are deposited in layers on the Earth's surface and compressed
What is 'sedimentary rock'
a fracture in the continuity of a rock formation caused by a shifting or dislodging of the earth’s crust, in which adjacent surfaces are displaced relative to one another.
What is 'a fault'
This is the proven idea that older rock layers formed long ago and newer layers have formed on top of those layers up to recent time.
What is the Law of Superposition?
Location of rock layers more likely to contain fossils resembling existing species.
What is 'More recently deposited rock'?
or
"What are upper rock layers?"
have caused mountains and deep ocean trenches to form and continually change the shape of Earth’s crust throughout time.
What are 'The movements of Earth’s continental and oceanic plates'
The unproven idea put forth by Alfred Wegner that continents were not always in their current, fixed position but were a large, single continent which broke apart.
What is the Theory of Continental Drift?
Carbon-14 dating, or Uranium to Lead.
What is 'an example of absolute dating'
Preserved remains or traces of organisms that provide important evidence of how life and environmental conditions have changed.
What are 'fossils'
When two plates push together, one crust subducting under the other or rising together to form mountains.
What is a convergent crust boundary?
When two plates pull away from each other, creating a large rift in the plates that is filled in with cooling magma. New rock or crust is formed.
What is a divergent boundary?
Catastrophes that have impacted the history of the Earth on a Global scale.
What is 'the impact of an asteroid or comet', an ice age, or global warming event.
an example of relative dating
What is ' the law of superposition'
What are index fossils used to estimate the age of nearby layers and fossils?
molten magma pushes up into solid crust, melting and replacing the crust with igneous rock.
What is 'an intrusion'?
Shifting of plates, folding, spreading, or tilting as well as erosion and weathering events all lead to the creating of gaps or the destruction of the layers of deposited rock. This negates the Law of Superposition.
What is an "unconformity?"
The amount of time that it takes for the unstable parent isotopes to shed their extra neutrons and become stable, daughter isotopes.
What is half-life?
The youngest layers are not always found on top because
What is 'folding, breaking, uplift of layers, or intrusions and unconformities' due to tectonic shifting.
Rocks, fossils, and ice cores show us about the history of the Earth
What is the evidence used to support the geological time scale or the history of the Earth.
also
What proves Earth’s climate and surface have changed over time'
The evidences are continental coastlines that fit together, matching rock formations on different continents, fossil distributions (Mesosaurus, Glossopteris) of animals too small to swim across oceans, and radar/sonar images and measurements.
What are the evidences of the Law of Plate Tectonics?
This occurs when the environment changes and the adaptive characteristics of a species are insufficient to allow its survival.
What is 'extinction'