Earth's Structure
Tectonics
Geology Vocab
Earth History
Rocks
100
The thin cooled layer of rock on the outside of Earth.
What is the crust?
100
As fast as your fingernails grow.
What is how fast do tectonic plates move?
100
Seeing fossils of a snail in a limestone rock by using your eyes is this importance science process.
What is observation?
100
The largest sections of geological time, based upon the types of life.
What are eras?
100
A rock that is formed from cooled magma or lava
What is igneous?
200
The part of the earth that is mostly melted rock.
What is the mantel?
200
The name of the continent when almost all land mass was in one place in ancient history.
What is Pangea.
200
After seeing the fossilized imprint of small footprints and large footprints a scientist guesses that these dinosaurs lived as family units. This scientist is using this important scientific process.
What is inference?
200
By far the largest portion of Earth's history is classified as this era.
What is Precambrian time or era.
200
A rock changed by heat and/or pressure.
What is metamorphic?
300
The inside core is in this state of matter and made of these elements.
What is solid nickel and iron?
300
The movement of the mantel which causes the breaking of earth's crust because of the rising of less dense hot material and the sinking of more dense cool material.
What is convection?
300
A geologist knows that the fossil of a dinosaur is older than the human fossil he found because it is lower in the rock layer. He is using this geology principle to infer this.
What is principle of superposition?
300
The era means "middle" life and was dominated by reptile life.
What is the Mesozoic Era?
300
The rock formed by weathering and erosion, deposition and cementation.
What is sedimentary?
400
The state of matter of the outer core and the elements that it is made of.
What is liquid iron and nickel?
400
The landform that can be caused when continental plates collide, like the Himalyas.
What are mountains?
400
A geologist sees that a rock structure has vertical sedimentary layers and spends the afternoon trying to figure out what flipped the rock this way. He is applying this geology principle that says the layers were horizontal at first.
What is the principle of horizontality?
400
This type of event ended most geological eras.
What is an extinction?
400
Wind blowing against the face of a rock and breaking off little pieces would be an example of this process.
What is weathering?
500
Earthquake waves Volcanoes spew melted rock Wobble (liquid like egg) Magnetism (magnetic metals) Asteroids/Meteoroids
How do scientists know what the inside of the Earth is like?
500
The place where the mantel melts through one spot in the earth's crust forming a volcano, like Hawaii.
What is a hot spot?
500
A geologist observes fossils of coral in a layer of limestone and infers that the coral probably lived in the same environment where we see coral today. This geologists is applying this principle.
What is the principle of uniformitarianism?
500
The observation that organisms best suited for their environments are most likely to survive and reproduce.
What is Natural Selection?
500
Sediment being carried to the gulf of Mexico is an example of this process.
What is erosion?
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