Fossil Facts
A type of fossil that provides evidence of ACTIVITIES of ancient organisms.
What is a trace fossil?
This type of rock is dark colored and the most common of all igneous rocks.
What is basalt?
This term is used to describe the edge of a continent that lies under the ocean.
What is continental shelf?
This word means a break in Earth's crust along which rocks move. It can cause a fracture zone.
What is fault?
Absolute age is the age of the rock since it was formed. This other way of aging of a rocks compares it to the ages of other rocks.
What is relative age?
One who studies fossils
Who is a paleontolgist?
This occurs when an igneous rock layer is formed when magma hardens BENEATH the earth's surface.
What is an intrusion?
The three layers of the earth
What are core, mantel and crust?
A long, deep split that forms when one tectonic plate slide beneath the other. These are the deepest part of the ocean floor.
What are trenches?
This directional word means parallel to the ground, as seen in the word horizon
What is horizontal?
This type of fossil is hollow in the shape of an organism
What is a mold?
This type of rock is a light colored igneous rock found all over Rockport, MA.
What is granite?
The single land mass that began to break apart 200 million years ago
What is Pangaea?
This occurs when molten material adds new oceanic crust to the ocean floor
What is sea-floor spreading?
This technology is used to detect and locate objects underwater using sound waves.
What is sonar?
Weathered surface materials such as soil and rocks added to the Earth's surface building up layers of sediment
What are deposits?
This "law" tell us that in layers of sedimentary rock, each layer is older than the layer below it
What is the Law of Superposition?
This describes the continents moving slowly across the Earth's surface.
What is continental drift?
The opposite of a divergent boundary, this occurs when plate boundaries move TOWARDS each other. Sometimes they even slide underneath each other causing volcanoes or earthquakes!
What is convergent boundary?
Like a calendar of events in Earth's history, this divides all time into units such as eons, eras, and periods.
What is geologic time scale?
The opposite of a mold, this term is used when a fossil is a solid, 3-D copy of an organisms shape
What is a cast?
This type of rock is best known to fans of KISS and Queen.
What is rock and roll?
The way underwater mountain ranges (oceanic ridges and mid-oceanic ridges) are formed
What is by magma rising where two plates are moving apart
This term is used to describe when two plates move past each other in opposite directions.
What is transform boundary?
What is evolution?