Fossils
A thick, slowly flowing liquid produced by plants that can harden into a solid.
What is resin?
Petrification requires water that has a lot of ______ in it.
What is minerals?
T/F: Only a tiny, tiny fraction of the fossils we find are of plants, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
What is? True.
The view that most of earth's geological features are the results of large-scale catastrophes.
What is catastrophism?
The process of counting tree rings to determine the age of a tree?
What is dendrochronology?
The preserved remains of a once-living organisms.
What is a fossil?
The conversion of organic material into rock.
What is petrification?
Fossils are usually found in sedimentary rock.
What is the first general feature of the fossil record?
The view that most of the earth's geological features are the result of slow, gradual processes that have been at work for millions or even billions of years.
What is uniformitarianism?
The mechanical advantage of 4 pulleys working together.
What is 4?
The most likely thing to happen to the remains of a dead plant or animal?
What is: They decompose.
Unlike fossil casts, petrification preserves what?
What is: The entire fossil (vs. just the shape and outer details of the mold)
The vast majority of the fossil record is made up of hard-shelled creatures like clams.
What is the second general feature of the fossil record?
A surface of erosion that separates one layer of rock from another.
What is an unconformity?
The 3 limitations of science...
What is:
It cannot prove anything
It is not 100% reliable
It must conform to the Scientific Method
Approximately how many species have gone extinct over the last 400 years?
What is 1,000.
The process by which an organism's remains are converted to a filmy residue that leaves a flattened "drawing" of the organism in rock.
What is carbonization?
Many of the fossils we find are of organisms that are still alive today, and many are of organisms that are now extinct.
What is the third general feature of the fossil record?
The three basic types of rock.
What is: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary?
The mistaken idea that living creatures cannot change. Darwin showed that this is not true.
What is the immutability of the species?
In only one layer of the Grand Canyon are these fossils found.
What is: placoderms?
The kinds of creatures that make up the vast majority of the fossil record.
What are hard shelled creatures?
The fossils found in one layer of stratified rock can be considerably different from the fossils found in another layer of stratified rock.
What is the fourth general feature of the fossil record?
Underground caverns are eroded by _____.
What is groundwater?
List the steps required to create a scientific law.
What is:
Make observations
Form a hypothesis
Perform experiments to confirm hypothesis
Hypothesis is now a theory
Perform many experiments over several years
Theory is now a law