Let's Turn Back Time
This era is also known as the Age of the Dinosaurs
What is the Mesozoic Era?
These organisms were the first life on earth, unicellular, and had no nucleus. (no oxygen)
What are prokaryotes?
When a living organism dies and is quickly buried by sediment (such as mud, sand or volcanic ash)
How are fossils formed?
*Advice from a fossil: Don't fall apart under pressure.*
This is when a bunch of different species die out within a short period of time.
What is a mass extinction?
These organisms do not need oxygen to live.
*100 Extra Points* Does cyanobacteria need oxygen to live?
What are anaerobic organisms?
*Extra Points* Yes - they are aerobic organisms/ need oxygen to live
The longest era on the Geological Time Scale
What is the Precambrian era of time?
Eventually they became cyanobacteria and needed this to survive.
What is oxygen?
Estimating the age of a fossil by comparing it to the fossils that are older or younger in layers of rock.
What is relative dating?
*Advice from a fossil: It's ok to be sedimental*
Earth is this many years old
What is 4.6 BILLION years old?
Conifers and flowering plants sprouted in this era.
*100 Extra Points if you can tell me the word that means "flowering plants"*
What is the Mesozoic era?
*EXTRA POINTS* for the word angiosperms
Sponges, corals, snails, trilobites lived in which era?
What is the Paleozoic era?
During the Cambrian Period Invertebrates were common. What is an Invertebrate?
No backbone.
These are 2 of the reasons that there are few fossils found from the Precambrian Era.
They are buried so deep, only soft-bodied organisms, changed from heat and pressure, and are very old.
*Advice from a Fossil: Stay Rock Solid!*
At least 3 reasons that mass extinctions have occurred in the past.
ice ages/Snowball Earth, volcanoes, tsunamis, asteroids, climate change, and even too much oxygen
This is the period when mammoths and saber tooth tigers lived.
*100 Extra Points - did mammoths live at the same time as dinosaurs and saber tooth tigers?
What lived in the quaternary period?
*Extra Points* Despite what the Ice Age movies show, mammoths did not live at the same time as dinosaurs bud did live with saber tooth tigers.
This era is when Life Starts and it is also known as the Age of Invertebrates
What is the Precambrian Era?
what ERA were the first vertebrates?
Paleozoic Era
Fossils can be found in the layers of the earth. The oldest layers are at the bottom.
What is Superposition?
*Advice from a fossil: Learn from the past and think long term*
How many years ago did the dinosaurs go extinct?
What is 65 million years ago?
These are 3 identifying characteristics of arthropods.
*100 Extra Points* Name the arthropod we studied
1. Segmented Bodies
2. Exoskeleton
3. Jointed Appendages
*Extra Points* Trilobites
These are the largest measure of time on the Geological Time Scale
What are EONS?
This era of time encompasses nearly 90% of the history of the Earth.
What is the Precambrian Era?
The oldest fossils found that we learned about in this unit.
What are trilobites?
*Advice from a fossil: Make a good impression!*
At the end of the Paleozoic Era, the world's largest mass extinction took place which killed off how many (%) of what organisms?
What are 96% of the ocean organisms?
Super Challenge *Triple Points* (only when all other windows have been uncovered in this column and row)
What colonized land first, plants or animals, and why?
Plants because without plants growing on land, there was nothing for other organisms to feed on.