Vocabulary
What type of a scientist studies fossils?
Paleontologist
Why does rapid & gentle burial increase preservation potential?
Because organisms that are buried alive or quickly after death and do not have a chance to decompose.
Mold, Cast
What is absolute dating?
Absolute dating is giving a specfic age or an actual number of years to a rock. Example: This basalt rock is 50 years old.
What is the difference between a body fossil and a trace fossil? Give an example.
A body fossil is a fossil of an organism's body or body parts. A trace fossil is a fossil of an organism's footprints, burrows, or other features created by an organism's movement. An example of a body fossil is a dinosaur bone and an example of a trace fossil is a footprint of a mammoth.
What are the preserved remains or traces of an organism?
Fossils
Why are shells and bones more likely to become a fossil?
This type of fossilization process does NOT ALTER (or which preserves) the original organism. Give examples.
Preservation of Original Material
Example: Mummification, Preserved in Amber, Tar Pits, and Frozen in Ice
What is relative dating?
Relative dating is using comparison to compare the age of a rock by using words such as "younger" or "older". Example: The rock layer on the bottom of the Grand Canyon is OLDER than the rock layer above it.
What is the Law of Superposition?
rock layers on the bottom are older than rock layers on the top
What is the name of a fossil of an organism's body or body parts?
Body Fossil
Why are burrowing animals more likely to become fossils?
These animals are already underground and gently "bury" themselves before death.
This process occurs when an organism dies and the carbon in its body starts to break down creating a dark coating on top of the dead organism.
Carbonization
What does the presence of trilobite fossils in the Grand Canyon tell us?
This tells us the area was once covered in seas since trilobites crawled along the seafloor.
What is the Law of Uniformitarianism?
We can assume that everything we observe happening on Earth today (earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains, trenches, etc), happened the same way in the past before we have human record of these geological events.
What is the name of a fossil of an organism's footprints, burrows, or other features created by an organism's movement?
Trace Fossil
What are two factors that impact whether or not an organism will become a fossil?
The type of organism it is and the environmental conditions in which it dies
List the types of fossilization processes that ALTER (or change) an organism.
Carbonization, Permineralization & Petrification, and Casts & Molds
The Geologic Time Scale is broken into periods. List the periods from longest to shortest.
Eon, Era, Periods, Epochs
What type of dating do paleontologists use to date MOST fossils?
Most fossil dating is done with relative dating because it does not require any special tools. It is done simply through observation.
What is the process of turning an organism or trace into a fossil?
Fossilization
What factors might destroy a fossil that is already formed?
Fossils might be destroyed due to weathering, erosion, plate tectonics, other rock cycle processes, deforestation, etc
What happens during petrification? Describe the process.
The original material is replaced by minerals that turn the wood into stone.
How has the climate of Antarctica changed over time? What fossil evidence supports this claim?
Antarctica used to have a more temperate climate, as evidenced by the discovery of fossils of evergreen trees.
How do fossils help us learn about Earth's history?
Fossils tell us what organisms belong to certain areas years ago. We can find Fossils in some areas that we wouldn't expect to find there today. For example, the Grand Canyon has trilobite fossils and Antarctica has confierous(evergreen) fossils. These climates are very different and the fossils that exist there today wouldn't be able to survive this type of climate.