Chapter 25 Flashcards
What is Paleontology?
The study of fossils
What are the two groups of dinosaurs?
Ornithischia and Saurischia
What is Ornithischia?
Dinosaurs that have not gone extinct. (Ex: birds)
What is a Saurischia?
Dinosaurs that are extinct.
What was the simulated volcanic eruption experiment?
Miller conducted an experiment simulating a volcanic eruption in 1953. It was tested again in 2008 but almost twice as much amino acids were produced. Change in atmosphere has caused this change in results.
What was the Miller-Urey Experiment?
This experiment took molecules and put them into a petri dish and heated it up. They shocked it with electricity to get a couple of the molecules to work.
This also created biological molecules.
What are deep sea alkaline vents? Why are they important to consider?
Alkaline vents are deep-sea vents that release water that has a high pH and is warm rather than hot. This could have had an environment more suitable for the origin of life.
-They are filled with hydrocarbons. Tiny pores and catalytic minerals may have evolved early life forms.
What time period was the start of fossil evidence?
600 million years ago is the start of fossil evidence
life existed way before we found the first multicellular life form
What was the Hallucigenia?
They were organisms that did not have backbones or a hardy structure. They out of luck survived and were fossilized.
What was the significance of the Tiktaalik Rosea?
They are extinct aquatic organisms that is the closest known relative of the four-legged vertebrates that went on to colonize land.
What are stromatolites?
Found in Australia, groups of bacteria that bound together to create structures called stromatolites. Lived about 3 billion years ago.
What does it mean when something is fossilized?
When things are fossilized they usually mean less or no oxygen.
What is relative dating?
Forming a date that is “relative” to where they are in the level of sediment.
- knowing where they occur in layers.
What is absolute dating?
It is giving a real year to a fossil.
What is radiometric dating?
a common technique to determine the absolute age of a fossil and is based on the decay of radioactive “parent” isotopes.
What is half life?
Half life is the time that is required for 50% of the “parent” isotope to decay into a daughter isotope.
What is carbon dating? Why is it so important?
Carbon dating is very important in knowing age of organisms. Carbon-14 is rare and it breaks down.
What is Dendochronology?
Andrew Douglass - an American Astronomer used the differences in tree ring widths to understand previous growth patterns in trees.
In what ways does dendochronology help in forming dates for organisms?
- It helps to see how long an organism has lived and also the changes in temperatures and climates.
- Thicker rings had more nutrients while thin rings meant there was some sort of drought and didnt have enough nutrients.
- Verify carbon-dating.
What are the three different era in Geologic record?
Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic.
What are the different periods in the cenozoic era from youngest to oldest?
Quaternary
Neogene
Paleogene
What are the different periods in the Mesozoic era from youngest to oldest?
Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic
What are the different periods in the Paleozoic era from youngest to oldest?
Permian Carboniferous Devonian Silurian Ordovician Cambrian
When did the Paleozoic era start?
542 million years ago.
