This is any evidence of an organism that is preserved in rock.
What is a fossil?
100
The Earth is at least this many years old.
What is 4.5 billion?
100
This is the culinary term scientists use to describe the early oceans.
What is primordial soup?
100
All current evidence suggests that the first true cells were this type of organism.
What are bacteria or prokaryotes?
100
Cells with membrane-bound organelles are categorized as this.
What are eukaryotes?
200
An example of this type of fossil is a nest.
What is a trace fossil?
200
This method of dating of materials in rock layers can only be used to determine how old or new a fossil is compared with fossils in other layers.
What is relative dating?
200
This is the disproven idea that living things can spring forth from nonliving material.
What is spontaneous generation?
200
This is the collective name for a variety of prokaryotic species which live in deep-sea vent communities and are much like what we hypothesize the earliest life forms were like.
What are Archaebacteria?
200
This is the idea that early eukaryotes evolved through symbiotic relationships between early prokaryotes.
What is endosymbiont theory?
300
This type of fossil is an empty space left behind when an organism is covered in sediment and then decays.
What is a mold?
300
Radiometric dating relies on determining the quantities of what types of atoms?
What are isotopes?
300
This is the well-understood theory that all living things come only from other living organisms.
What is biogenesis?
300
The earliest life forms of life used this autotrophic process.
What is chemosynthesis?
300
This is the type of symbiotic relationship in which the partners both benefit.
What is mutualism?
400
This type of fossil forms when a mold fills with mineral-laden water. The minerals then harden.
What is a cast?
400
This is the amount of time required for 50% of an atom with unstable nuclei to decay or breakdown and form a new atom.
What is half-life?
400
This scientists suggested that life began in the early oceans and organic molecules were formed by energy from lightning and energy from the sun.
Who is Alexander Oparin?
400
Even the earliest life forms had a great deal of diversity. This was as a result of what?
What is mutation?
400
These were the first types of organisms to appear on the planet Earth.
What are bacteria or prokaryotes?
500
There are not fossils of every living thing that ever existed on Earth for several reasons. Name one.
What are: conditions necessary for fossil formation have not always existed, the rock cycle destroys fossils.
500
This principle of geology says that newer layers of sediment and rock are laid down on top of older layers.
What is the law of superposition?
500
These large, ordered structures that are enclosed by a membrane and carry out some life functions are believed to be the precursors to the first true cells.
What are protocells?
500
The evolution of this physiological process allowed for the eventual evolution of aerobic organisms.
What is photosynthesis?
500
This scientist first suggested a theory in the 1960's for how organisms with membrane-bound organelles evolved.