Vocabulary
What is the name of a scientist who studies fossils?
What is rapid burial?
When organisms are buried alive or quickly after death and do not have a chance to decompose.
Mold, Cast
What is absolute dating?
Absolute dating is giving a specfic age or an actual number of years to a rock. Example: This basalt rock is 50 years old.
What is the difference between a body fossil and a trace fossil? Give an example.
A body fossil is a fossil of an organism's body or body parts. A trace fossil is a fossil of an organism's footprints, burrows, or other features created by an organism's movement. An example of a body fossil is a dinosaur bone and an example of a trace fossil is a footprint of a mammoth.
What are the preserved remains or traces of an organism?
A Fossil
Why are shells and bones more likely to become a fossil?
This type of fossilization process preserves MOST of the original organism.
Preservation of Original Material
What is relative dating?
Relative dating is using comparison to compare the age of a rock by using words such as "younger" or "older". Example: The rock layer on the bottom of the Grand Canyon is OLDER than the rock layer above it.
True or False: Fossils are usually found in igneous rocks
False, fossils are usually found in sedimentary rocks.
What is the name of a fossil of an organism's body or body parts?
A Body Fossil
Why are burrowing animals more likely to become fossils?
These animals are already underground and gently "bury" themselves before death.
This process occurs when an organism dies and the carbon in its body starts to break down creating a dark coating on top of the dead organism.
Carbonization
What does the presence of trilobite fossils in Oklahoma tell us about Oklahoma in the past?
This tells us the area was once covered in seas since trilobites crawled along the seafloor.
Describe the difference between absolute dating and relative dating. Give an example of each.
Absolute dating is giving a specific age to a rock, where relative dating compares rocks in different layers. An example of absolute dating is saying a rock is 2,500 years old. An example of relative dating is saying a rock is younger than another rock.
What is the name of a fossil of an organism's footprints, burrows, or other features created by an organism's movement?
A Trace Fossil
What are two factors that impact whether or not an organism will become a fossil?
The type of organism it is and the environmental conditions in which it dies
List the types of fossilization processes that ALTER an organism.
Carbonization, Permineralization, Petrification, and Casts & Molds
The Geologic Time Scale is broken into periods. List the periods from longest to shortest.
Eon, Era, Periods, Epochs
How do fossils help scientists make predictions about an area over a given period of time?
Fossils tell scientists what organisms lived in an area during a certain period of time. They can provide information about the type of climate in that area over many years.
What is the process of turning an organism or trace into a fossil?
Fossilization
Why might a fossil that formed become destroyed?
Fossils might be destroyed due to weathering, erosion, plate tectonics, other rock cycle processes, deforestation, etc
What happens to petrified wood? Describe the process.
The original material is replaced by minerals that turn the wood into stone.
How has Wyoming changed over time?
Wyoming was believed to be a tropical climate at first. Then, the seas advanced and receded to bring crocodile-like reptiles before what we see such as the presence of horses, dogs, cats, etc.
How do fossils help us learn about earth's past?
Fossils tell us a story of how climates have changed. Different organisms exist in areas that are no longer able to inhabit those areas. For example, tropical plants that were found in Antarctica are no longer able to survive in that climate. This tells us that Antarctica's climate has changed over time.