Lithosphere
Chalk on top of Siltstone and shale on top of Sandstone.
What is a fining-upwards sequence?
Long-term weather for the planet. Example: increasing global temperatures over many decades.
What is climate?
The first transgression of the Paleozoic Era, in the Cambrian Period.
What was the Sauk Transgression?
The first "big" animals (metazoans) - fossils are in the Neoproterozoic.
What are Ediacarans?
It would one day be called North America.
What was Laurentia?
An increase in weathering and erosion can lead to a decrease in this gas in the atmosphere.
What is CO2?
What are mid-ocean ridges?
When marine animals use dissolved minerals in the ocean to make hard parts.
What is biomineralization?
The MesoProterozoic supercontinent, assembled 1.3 – 1.0 Byr. ago.
What is Rodinia?
When climate is colder, this will be a positive value in seawater and therefore in marine fossils.
What is dO18?
The increase of this element in seawater in the Paleo- Proterozoic is responsible for the precipitation of gypsum and pyrite at this time.
What is sulfur?
Both evolution of shells, teeth, and bones, and an increase in the diversity of life.
What are two causes of the Cambrian Explosion?
Pieces of continental crust added to the craton.
What are terranes?
Two types of rocks that formed due to an increase in oxygen in the atmosphere (one on land, one in the oceans).
What are Banded Iron Formations and Continental Red Beds?
Sturtian and Marinoan in the Neoproterozoic.
What were two Snowball Earth episodes?
Mutually beneficial cooperation between two prokaryotes.
What is endosymbiosis?
The first mountain building event that formed the Appalachians.
What is the Taconic Orogeny?
This organism produced oxygen and cleaned the iron out of the oceans producing BIFs.
What are cyanobacteria?
Sediments with random size chunks that are made by glaciers. Evidence for the "Snowball Earth" episodes.
What are tillites?
A complex cell with a nucleus and organelles that have their own DNA.
What is a eukaryote?