Chapter 7 Stones And Bones Flashcards
(54 cards)
Deep time
The theory that the world is much older than biblical explanations allowed- determined by gradual natural process like erosion.
Continental Drift
The slow movement of continents over time
Uniformitarianism
Theoretic perspective that geological processes observed today are the same as the process we operating in the past.
Fossils
The mineralized copies of once living organisms.
Fossil
Mineralized copies of once living organisms
Bya
Billion years ago
Eon
Largest subunit of time
Eras
Units of time that span billions of years and are subdivided into periods and epochs.
Periods
Geological Time units that span millions of years and are subdivided into epochs.
Epochs
The smallest units of geological time, spanning thousands to millions of years.
Holocene
The current geological epoch starting 10 Kya
Anthropocene
The proposed name for our current geological epoch based on human-driven climate change and mass extinction of nonhuman species caused by human activities.
Taphonomy
The study of what happens to an organism after death.
Fossilization
The preservation of an organism against the natural processes of decay.
Anaerobic
An environment without oxygen
Lithification
When the weight and pressure of the sediment squeeze out any extra fluids and replace the voids that appear with minerals from the surrounding sediments.
Permineralization
When minerals from water impregnate or replace organic remains leaving a fossilized copy of the organism.
Petrified wood
When actual pieces of wood mineralize and turn into rock.
Hominins
Includes all human ancestors who existed after the evolutionary split from chimpanzees and bonobos. 6-7 Mya
Megafauna
Large animals such as mammoths and mastadons
Trace fossils
Fossilized remains of activity such as footprints
Bezoars
Hard concrete-like substances found in the intestines of fossilized creatures- a mineralized hairball
Coprolite
Fossilized dung
In matrix
The fossil is embedded in secondary rock.
