The three types of rocks.
What are igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary?
The four branches of scientific study involved in research about biological origins
What are:
Evolutionary Biologists
Molecular Biologists
Biogeographic Researchers
Paleontologists
These are the three different ways fossils are formed in sediment.
What is:
Permineralization
Impression
Preservation
The_________ is the history of life as preserved by fossils and documented by scientists.
What is fossil record?
When layers of sedimentary rock are originally deposited horizontally; any tilting happened later; seen in the image below.
What is original horizontality?
The death of every member of a species from loss of habitat, changes in local environment or the introduction of a new competitor can cause ________.
What is extinction?
Rocks that have been transformed over time from one type of material to another. They either began as igneous or sedimentary rocks.
What are metamorphic rocks?
These scientists look for similarities and differences in the genes of diverse organisms.
What are molecular biologists?
This is fossilized feces, a type of trace fossil.
What is a corprolite?
This compares one rock or fossil to another to determine which one is older.
What is relative dating?
Layers of rock are continuous until they encounter other solid bodies or acted upon after they are deposited, as pictured below.
What is lateral continuity?
When a great many species go extinct in a relatively short period of time.
What is mass extinction?
Rocks form when magma or lava cools and crystalizes.
What are igneous rocks?
These scientists look for traces of the history of life in fossils.
What are paleontologists?
Buried organisms decompose and leave an empty space-a mold. Minerals fill the empty space or sediment may fill the mold-a cast. Footprints, skin, feathers and other evidence of organism activity form molds-trace fossils.
What are impression fossils?
A timescale that estimates the intervals of time from the Earth’s formation to the present day using the sciences of stratigraphy and paleontology.
What is geological timescale?
Intrusions (igneous rock) are the most recent of the layers it disturbs, as seen below.
What are cross-cutting relationships?
The theory most scientists endorse through scientific evidence which supports that all the organisms around today came from an original creature cell, or self-replicating RNA.
What is the Evolutionary Theory?
Rocks form on or near the surface of the Earth from the compression of sediments. Erosion and weathering break down large rocks into sediment that make up these rocks.
What are sedimentary rocks?
These scientists study similarities in the features and embryonic development of species.
What are evolutionary biologists?
This type of fossil forms when an organism is buried quickly in a low-oxygen environment. This prevents decomposition, giving lots of information about the organism.
What are preservation fossils?
A method used to estimate the age of rocks and of the fossils in each layer of rock by measuring how much of the radioactive material in the rocks or fossils has broken down or decayed into more stable elements.
What is radiometric dating?
The oldest layer of rock is on the bottom. Like a pile of dirty clothes, as seen below.
What is superposition?
A consumer, such as a bacterium or fungus, that breaks down dead organic matter and returns the nutrients and minerals they contain to the soil.
What is a decomposer?
The formation of rock from clay, sand and other sediments on the bottom of the ocean or other bodies of water.
What is lithification?
These scientists study the distribution of species and ecosystems over the Earth and through time.
What are biogeographical researchers?
In these types of fossils, water carrying minerals soak into the cells of plants, the water evaporates and leaves the minerals, those minerals crystalize.
These are commonly known as a petrified fossils.
What are permineralized fossils or permineralization?
The description of rock successions and the interpretation of the layers as means of developing a general geological time scale.
What is stratigraphy?
The layering that happens in most sedimentary rocks and igneous rocks that form at the Earth’s surface from lava flows and volcanic deposits.
What is stratification?
The three causes of mass extinction scientists have identified.
What are:
Increase of oxygen in the atmosphere
Continental drift-changed the terrain, volcanic activity, global climate change
Meteorite impact-debris fills the sky, plants die, consumers die.