Earth's Changing Surface
The removal of rock particles by wind, water, ice, or gravity is known as _____.
erosion
Water that falls to Earth as rain, snow, sleet, or hail is called_____.
Precipitation
_____ can provide clues about the activities of ancient organisms.
Trace fossils
_____ are the streams and small rivers that feed into a main river.
Tributaries
The process by which all the different kinds of living things have changed over long periods of time is called _____.
evolution
Mass movement is caused by _____.
gravity
The three major steps of the water cycle are _____.
evaporation, condensation, precipitation
How do most fossils form?
Living things die and their remains are buried by sediments.
Water that fills the cracks and spaces in underground soil and rock layers is called _____.
groundwater
The earliest life forms were _____.
single-celled organisms
The agent of mechanical weathering in which rock is worn away by the grinding action of other rock particles is called _____.
abrasion
Salinity is a measure of _____ in water.
dissolved salts
A type of organism that no longer exists on Earth is said to be _____.
extinct
A well in which groundwater rises because of pressure is called a(an) _____.
artesian well
A fossil is _____.
the preserved remains or traces of an organism
_____ weathering causes the mineral composition of rocks to change.
Chemical
In the Northern Hemisphere, currents curve to the right because of the _____.
Coriolis effect
The law of superposition states that, in horizontal layers of sedimentary rock, each layer is _____.
older than the layer above it and younger than the layer below it.
The horizontal distance between wave crests is the _____.
wavelength
Many scientists hypothesize that the dinosaurs became extinct because _____.
an asteroid hit earth, throwing dust into the atmosphere and cooling the climate so that dinosaurs could not survive.
Decomposers are the soil organisms that _____.
break down and digest the remains of dead organisms.
In which zone is ocean temperature most affected by the weather?
surface zone
The Paleozoic,Mesozoic, and Cenozoic are divisions in the geological time scale called _____.
eras
Tides are caused by _____.
the interaction of Earth, the moon, and the sun.
Landslides, mudflows, slump, and creep are all examples of _____.
mass movement