Final Flashcards
(133 cards)
1
Q
How long did dinosaurs dominate terrestrial environments? What era?
A
150 Million years; Mesozoic
2
Q
When was the largest mass extinction in Earth history?
A
between the Permian and Triassic periods (and thus the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras)
3
Q
How do we know about Mass extinction #3 (between Paleozoic and Mesozoic)?
A
best known from shallow marine organisms because of their relatively good fossil record
4
Q
What was the climate of interior Pangea?
A
“continental” climate with limited precipitation and large swings in temperature
5
Q
When do dinosaurs appear? What is their first form? Where they dominant?
A
middle of the Triassic period as small bipedal predators; NO
6
Q
What are archosaurs? When did they appear?
A
appeared in the late Permian period, but they began to diversify in the Triassic period. They include dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and crocodiles, plus some other groups restricted to the Triassic period.
7
Q
What are synapsids?
A
includes mammals and their ancestors; sometimes known as “protomammals” or “mammal-like reptiles,” though technically they were not reptiles
8
Q
What are diapsids?
A
contains most of the major reptile groups, such as archosaurs, lizards, and snakes
9
Q
Describe diapsid skull
A
the earliest groups of diapsids all shared two holes between the eye socket, the “orbit”
10
Q
Describe archosaur skull
A
recognized particularly by two additional openings in the skull, one prominent one in front of the orbit (the “antorbital fenestra”).
11
Q
Define continental sea
A
While sea level is high enough and the land level low enough, the sea will flood the lowlands, created shallow seas covering parts of the continents; they become large sedimentary basins accumulating sediment and fossils of the animals living in sea
12
Q
The Mesozoic period is known for several different groups of large predatory marine reptiles, none of which were dinosaurs. Name them
A
ichthyosaurs
plesiosaurs
mosasaurs
13
Q
What do ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs,
and mosasaurs have in common?
A
Each of these groups evolved from land animals and each had the body plan of a land tetrapod, air breathing with four limbs
14
Q
Describe ichthyosaurs
A
look superficially like sharks (which are fish) and dolphins (mammals), though anatomically each group achieved this hydrodynamic shape in different ways
15
Q
When do plesiosaurs first appear?
A
~250 MYA
16
Q
Describe plesiosaurs
A
Early forms had webbed hands & fee; later forms had broad paddles used to “fly” through the waters.
17
Q
When did ichthyosaurs first appear? Describe them
A
~250 Ma; Later forms fish- or dolphin-shaped
18
Q
What are mosasaurs?
A
lizards; first appear by 200 Ma; evolved to life in the Cretaceous Period seas
19
Q
Describe turtles
A
first appear by 200 Ma; ancestry a bit of a question, but many agree that they are a type of DIAPSID reptile
20
Q
Describe one characteristic of primitive turtles
A
mouth lined with teeth
21
Q
The Mesozoic era saw the origin of which two kinds of ____ that independently evolved flight?
A
archosaurs: pterosaurs and birds
22
Q
Pterosaurs arose in the ____ period and survived through the _____ period
A
Triassic; ;Cretaceous
23
Q
Describe Pterosaurs and their environment
A
- had a wing membrane stretched across their 4th finger to the legs
- had a great diversity of sizes and behaviors, from tiny to some with a 30+ feet wingspan
- many lived in coastal marine areas where they preyed upon fish
24
Q
What is homology?
A
Shared trait because both inherited it
25
What is Analogy?
Superficially similar but arose separately in each, via convergent evolution
26
What are theropods?
- Meat-eating dinosaurs
- Triassic to Cretaceous (230 –> 65 Ma)
- With birds, the only living group of dinosaurs
- posses furcula
27
What are furcula?
wishbone of a bird
28
Describe which animals were affected by the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction
known in the general public for the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, but it involved a wide range of organisms
29
What caused Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction? How many years ago did it occur?
comet or asteroid hit the Earth along is what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico about 66 million years ago
30
What other factor could have impacted the Cretacous-Paleogene extinction?
volcanism in western India; possible that gases from the volcanism changed atmosphere/climate, leaving biota vulnerable to the extraterrestrial impact
31
After the Cretacous-Paleogene extinction, __ and ___ filled the ecological spaces of ___ and ____.
birds; mammals; pterosaurs; dinosaurs
32
Name some victims of the end of the Cretaceous
non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs; marine reptiles = plesiosaurs, mosasaurs; marine invertebrates=ammonites, rudist bivalves, some snails, planktonic foraminifera (protists)
33
Why is iridium significant?
The notion that a cosmic impact from an asteroid or comet triggered this mass extinction began with the discovery of a layer of clay enriched with iridium. This metal is rare on Earth's surface but relatively common in space rocks. Given this "iridium anomaly," the father-son duo of Luis and Walter Alvarez, along with Frank Asaro and Helen Michel, proposed in 1980 that an extraterrestrial collision finished the age of dinosaurs.
34
one group of dinosaurs that survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction?
a group of theropods we now call birds
35
In the 10 million years following the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, what were the dominant carnivores on land?
large flightless predatory birds
36
Of the many groups of mammals that existed in the Mesozoic, which three survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction?
primitive monotremes; placentals; marsupials
37
What are placental?
mammals with relatively long gestation and live birth – most mammals in North America
38
What are marsupials?
live birth, but shorter gestation, in which the young juveniles continue to develop in a “pouch;" embryo and maternal tissues separated by an eggshell for most of the time; A short-lived placenta does form, however
39
What are primitive monotremes?
lay eggs – today represented by the platypus and echidna
40
When did polar ice caps begin to develop in Antarctica?
45 MYA
41
What was the climate of the early Cenozoic?
very warm without polar ice caps
42
How did the climate of the Cenozoic change?
was very warm without polar ice caps, but the climate began to cool, with polar ice caps beginning to develop in Antarctica; An overall trend of cooling and drying since then led to extensive grasslands and the large mammal fauna we associated with these less forested habitats
43
The oldest widely accepted fossils are what? From when?
stromatolites, made by cyanobacteria, from about 3.5 billion years ago
44
Life first appears on Earth when?
sometime in the first billion years
45
Oxygen produced by photosynthetic bacteria accumulated in the atmosphere, reaching levels of about ___% what they are now by about ___ years ago.
10; 2.5 billion
46
The first eukaryotic cells appear sometime between __ and __ billion years ago
2.5 and 2.0
47
One-celled eukaryotic organisms are known as?
protists
48
some of the first multicellular eukaryotic organisms were?
marine macro algae
49
Describe the Earth's climate .7 billion years ago
the Earth suffered a substantial glaciation in which landmasses were covered by glaciers down to the tropics
50
Shorter after glaciers from .7 BYA disappear, we find the first what?
the first animal-like multicellular organisms, known as the Ediacaran faun
51
When does the Precambrian end?
541 MYA
52
When did animals arise?
late Precambrian, by about 600 million years ago
53
What is the Cambrian explosion?
530 MYA; the 30 million years during the Cambrian period in which many of today’s animal groups (“phyla”) appear
54
What happened w/animal bodies in the Cambrian?
a number of organisms evolved skeletal parts (which also makes them preserve better)
55
What are arthropods?
Arthropods are among the most prominent groups of early marine animals
56
Many of the early arthropod groups went extinct not long after the ___ period, but _____were abundant in the ____ era generally, and arthropods have been diverse and abundant throughout Earth's history
Cambrian; trilobites; Paleozoic
57
Define Ediacara fauna
lived in oceans 580-550 MYA
58
What are trilobites?
three lobed; earliest trilobites originally defined the base of the Cambrian period;
with new boundary definitions, they now appear about 10 million years
above base of Cambrian
59
Cambrian Explosion animal examples
```
Mollusks (clams, etc.)
Arthropods (insects, etc.)
Porifera (sponges)
Cnidarians (corals, etc.)
Echinoderms (sea stars, etc.)
Vertebrates (you, etc.)
```
60
What happened after the diversification of the “Cambrian fauna?”
some lineages went extinct, while others went on to diversify further and become the dominant marine taxa of the Paleozoic era – the “Paleozoic fauna” -- for over 200 million years
61
there are two kinds of places on Earth: those where history is being preserved (?) and those were history is being destroyed (?).
where sediments are being deposited; where weathering is occurring
62
In the area around Ithaca, sediments were preserved in the early to mid _____ (up through the _____period), and, perhaps, have been destroyed ever since (probably destroying some of the top layers of Devonian rocks).
Paleozoic; Devonian
63
The history that accessible to us is at what interface?
the uppermost of the sedimentary layers that were deposited, but have not yet been weathered away. That is, rocks below the ground surface are too deep in the rock to study (except for via cores), and those above the interface have of course been weathered away already.
64
IDK
In high latitudes, however, there is a veneer of patchily distributed, unlithified sediment on top of the bedrock left behind after the most recent advance of glacial ice in the Pleistocene epoch. The sediment found as mud at the bottom of “post-glacial” ponds often contains a fossil record, of plants, small shells, and occasionally fossil vertebrates. Thus, in Upstate NY we find both ancient marine fossils and not-very-old terrestrial and freshwater fossils.
65
Describe Silurian Seas
Jawless, armored fish
Sea scorpions: eurypterids
Cephalopods: nautiloids
66
Define brachiopods
perhaps the most common fossil of the
| Paleozoic Era, and common in Devonian rocks near Ithaca
67
Are clams and brachiopods the same?
clams (bivalve mollusks) ≠ brachiopods
| clams also in Devonian, but not dominant like today
68
What period are trilobites from?
Paleozoic era
69
The first fish, in the Cambrian period, had a cartilaginous rod (“notochord”), precursor to what?
vertebral column
70
Describe first fish in the cambrian period
- cartilaginous rod (“notochord”), precursor to the vertebral column;
- “segmented muscles” (which you may have noticed in cooked fish)
- gill slits; and
- fins on top (dorsal) and bottom (ventral).
- But they had no bony (calcium phosphate) skeleton.
71
What fish adaptations appear by Ordovician?
some jawless (that is, without a bottom jaw) fish had small bits of bone embedded in their skin, perhaps for protection
72
What fish adaptations appear by late Cambrian?
Simple fish with tooth-like structures (“conodonts”); Cambrian to Triassic
73
What type of fish were among the great predators of the Devonian?
Jawed fish with head plates (placoderms!)
74
What are conodonts?
Simple fish with tooth-like structures
75
What are placoderms?
Jawed fish with head plates; Silurian and especially Devonian
76
When did Sharks and other cartiginous jawed fish appear?
Devonian
77
What type of fish appeared in the late Silurian?
Bony fish, including ray-finned fish and lobe-finned fish
78
What are ray-finned fish vs. lobe-finned fish ?
ray-finned fish = most fish we are familiar with today
| love-finned fish = gave rise to land vertebrates known as “tetrapods"
79
Why is Devonian is known as the “Age of Fishes?"
Because of the diversity of fish in the Devonian period, including both ancient armed fish and fish that would later dominate the oceans
80
when/what are first tetrapods?
```
amphibians (about 360 my); All are Middle-
Late Devonian (385-365 million yrs)
```
81
Describe process of evolving physical features for being on land
Limbs and fingers evolved BEFORE the transition to land – probably for maneuvering on the bottom in shallow water or at water’s edge
82
Describe the plant life on land in the Palezoic era
Simple land plants such as mosses begin to emerge as early as the Ordovician period, but it took until the middle Devonian period for the first forests to emerge. Forest vegetation expanded greatly in the late Devonian and early Carboniferous periods
83
What adaptations allowed plants to live on land? angoisp
The evolution of vascular tissues allowed plants to grow upward outside of the buoyant habitat of water, a waxy coating (“cuticle”) prevented dessication outside of water, and stomata allowed plants to control passage of gases into and out of their tissues
84
What happened to O2 concentration in the atmosphere in the late Devonian period?
- Photosynthesis, together with relatively slow decay rates (forest bacterial systems maybe have taken some time to evolve), drew atmospheric CO2 concentrations down and drove oxygen concentrations up (about 40% higher than today)
- The low CO2 concentrations led to glaciation at the South Pole, and the high oxygen concentration contributed to unusually large arthropods, which are normally limited in size because of constraints on gas exchange in and out of their exoskeletons.
85
How did coal deposits develop during late Devonian?
Large quantities of plant matter were preserved in swampy settings, eventually becoming compacted into large coal deposits
86
Describe the climate of the late Devonian period
The low CO2 concentrations led to glaciation at the South Pole
87
Describe life on land in late Devonian period
Land arthropods diversify as plants evolve further onto land, and lobe-finned fish adapting to movement in aquatic settings filled with plants may have contributed to the evolution of limbs.
88
Define cuticle
waxy layer on the plant’s surface that helps the plant retain water and avoid drying out
89
Define stomata
pores in the cuticle that allow the plant to breathe, letting in CO2 and releasing oxygen. Stomata can also close, helping the plant retain water.
90
Define vascular tissue
special cells form that distributes water and nutrients through- out the plant. Vascular tissue also strengthens the stem, allowing the plant to grow tall
91
Describe Early Vascular land plants
Rootless & Leafless
Height – Less than 12”
Oldest – 430 Ma
Reproduce by Spores
92
Characteristics of vascular land plant spores
spores have no food supply
spores have no protective seed coat
spores must be near water
spores are one-celled, seeds are multicelled
93
Describe climate in carboniferous
- Started: very hot, wet, high CO2
- CO2 declines, O2 goes up
- - >Because of extensive fern forests
- - >O2 allows huge arthropods & amphibians
- - >CO2 decline associated with cooling
- End Carboniferous drier, O2 decline
- - >Drying because of Pangaea
- - >Amniotes evolve from amphibians
94
What adaptations of plants and animals happened in the Carboniferous period?
evolved adaptations to move into environments more independent of standing water. Plants evolved seeds and vertebrates evolved amniotic eggs: both reproductive solutions contain an outer coating to prevent dessication (a “seed coat” and a mineralized shell, respectively), yet allow gases to pass in and out, and they each contain a food resource inside for the developing juvenile.
95
What animals appeared in the late Carboniferous period? What was a defining characteristic of their evolution?
reptiles; origin of amniotic eggs
96
When do the diapsids and synapsids appear?
Carboniferous period
97
What plants were among the earliest to plant seeds?
Gymnosperms
98
Why did carbon dioxide levels began increasing and oxygen levels decreasing by the end of the Carboniferous?
microbial systems evolved to create faster decay of dead plant matter
99
What do the continents look like in the late Carboniferous?
landmasses moving equator-ward from the polar Southern Hermisphere began to coalesce
100
What are the physical differences between diapsids and synapsids?
```
Diapsids = 2 holes behind orbital; Peg Teeth
Synapsids = 1 hole behind orbital; “Heterodont” (different shaped teeth)
```
101
How many years ago did amphibians break into amphibians and amniotes?
350 MYA
102
When did amniotes split into diapsids and synapsids?
300 MYA
103
What do the continents do during the Permian period?
continents were beginning to come together in the supercontinent of Pangea
104
As the continents came together in the Permian period, how did this affect Earth's climate?
Associated with that change was drying, hot environments associated with continental climates
105
What are therapsids?
type of synapsid; had bodies that somewhat resemble mammals in overall form, including having their legs tucked under their body in a way that promotes upright (as opposed to sprawling) walking.
106
Describe the role of diapsids in the Permian period
Diapsids also diversified during the Permian, but were not as prominent as synapsids or as the diapsids known as archosaurs that would be so successful during the Mesozoic.
107
Describe the Permian-Triassic extinction
extinct most species of “Paleozoic fauna” taxa that had dominated the oceans for nearly 300 million years; never fully rebounded; new set of taxa (the “modern fauna”) became dominant; these include the animals you would see today; The terrestrial fauna and flora also suffered extinction, and many of the synapsids that had diversified in the Permian went extinct
108
Describe effect of Permian-Triassic extinction on synapsids
many of the synapsids that had diversified in the Permian went extinct. Certain synapsids did rebound in the Triassic, one lineage giving rise to mammals, but synapsids wouldn’t dominate again until after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction,
109
What caused the Permian-Triassic extinctin
the rapid accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere released due to a combination huge flood basalt deposits and burning through of extensive coal deposits by magma moving vertically through sedimentary strata. The CO2 from burning coal heated the atmosphere, created acid rain and acidified oceans, contributed to reduced oxygen in sluggish oceans, and perhaps even led to poisonous hydrogen sulfide gases
110
What were sea temperatures like at the equator in the early Triassic?
like swimming in the hottest hot tub you’ve been in
111
What happened to the ocean at the end of the Permian?
ocean acidification; huge volcanic eruptions that spewed out carbon dioxide and made the oceans more acidic
112
Describe the factors in the Permian-Triassic extinction
-extreme climate warming
-anoxia (low oxygen) in the oceans (hypoxia)
-ocean acidification, acid rain
PLUS
-carbon dioxide poisoning
- (water both anoxic and sulfidic) reduced habitat area
113
How does the global carbon cycle affect CO2?
largest “reservoir” of carbon is rocks; When silicate rocks weather, CO2 is removed from the atmosphere as carbonic acid that drains via rivers to the ocean; other reservoirs include the ocean, terrestrial plants, Phytoplankton; atmosphere is small + dynamic reservoir of CO2
114
What is one effect of global temperature increase?
In general, as the global temperature has increased, so has the global frequency of heavy rain or snow events.
115
Where does sediment accumulate?
Sediment accumulates only in places where it is not regularly washed away by water or air (or glaciers). This tends to happen in water bodies – either quiet water or below large waves.
116
To a first approximation, the world can be divided into what two kinds of places?
1) weathering and erosion occur on land, and
| 2) sediment accumulation occurs in water.
117
What are two ways we might find fossils at the surface?
1) fossils still near the surface i.e. Jarkov mammoth in permafrost
2) sediment layers that accumulated above them have weathered away; means the environment is no longer below water – the land must have “uplifted; most of fossils we studied
118
What are phyla? When did most of today's phyla appear?
animal groups; during Cambrian explosion
119
Marine strata from the _____ , _____, and ______ periods are at the surface in central and western New York State
Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian
120
What was the US like in the Paleozoic era?
During this time New York was south of the equator, and a shallow sea covered much of the what is now the Eastern and Midwestern US.
121
The bedrock at the surface of Central and Western NY formed in a shallow sea that covered area to the west of what we now call the Appalachian Mountains. How are we able to see these rocks? (6 ways)
- - weathering of an ancient mountain range
- - deposition of those sediments in the ancient sea about 100 m deep
- - burial of hundreds of meters (or kilometers) of sediment; this was allowed by downwarping of the bottom of the sea as sediments piled up
- - lithification of those sediments deep beneath the surface
- - a relative drop in sea level and consequent weathering of the land surface, weathering aways hundreds of meters (or kilometers) of layers of sediment
- - reappearance of those ancient sediments at the surface
122
In the area around Ithaca, sediments were preserved in the early to mid ____ (up through the _____ period), and, perhaps, have been destroyed ever since
Paleozoic; Devonian
123
In high latitudes, however, there is a veneer of patchily distributed, unlithified sediment on top of the bedrock left behind after the most recent advance of glacial ice in the ____ _____
Pleistocene epoch
124
Name the periods in the Paleozoic era
Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, & Permian periods
125
Name the periods in the Mesozoic era
Triassic, Jurassic, & Cretaceous periods
126
Name the periods in the Cenozoic era
Paleogene, Neogene, & Quaternary periods
127
Name the order of the eras
Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic
128
What is the Phanerozoic eon?
current geologic eon in the geologic time scale, and the one during which abundant animal and plant life has existed. It covers 541 million years to the present, and began with the Cambrian Period when animals first developed hard shells preserved in the fossil record.
129
Define genus
biology any of the taxonomic groups into which a family is divided and which contains one or more species
130
Define family (in taxonomy)
it is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus.
131
Define phylogeny
the history of the evolution of a species or group
132
What are ammonites?
an extinct group of marine mollusc animal; had hard shells; lived in Mesozoic era; asteroid at the end of the Cretaceous killed them
133
What are angiosperms?
a plant that has flowers and produces seeds enclosed within a carpel.
