Geology Quizzes Final Exam

A rock sample containing an isotope with a half-life of 28 million years has an initial mass of 184 grams. How much time has elapsed after three half-lives?

84 million years

The process by which life formed from nonliving matter is known as

Abiogenesis

Which of the following was critical for the adaptation of reptiles to terrestrial ecosystems?

Amniote egg

Organisms that do not depend on oxygen for growth are

Anaerobic

Structures like bat and fly wins have similar functions, but they evolved in different ways. What would these types of structures be called?

Analogous structures

Conical marine organisms that lived during the Cambrian and were the earliest builders of reef-like structures known as

Archaeocyathids

Which part of the upper mantle behaves plastically and flows slowly?

Asthenosphere

During the Permian Period, the Permian Basin in west Texas was distinguished by

Barrier reefs

The churning of sediments by organisms that burrow through it is

Bioturbation

Sedimentary rocks with HIGH organic content are often

Black

Vertebrates first appeared in the

Cambrian

A(n) _________ is an accumulation of detrital sediment adjacent to an uplifted area.

Clastic wedge

_________ would indicate deposition occurred in a high-energy environment

Conglomerates

What is the development of similar characteristics in distantly related organisms called?

Convergent evolution

In a(n) ____ bond, elements share electrons

Covalent

The nucleus or foundation of a continent is a(n)

Craton

Large scale cross-beds (greater than 10ft. in height) commonly indicate a _________ sedimentary environment

Desert dune

Silled basins are thought to be the site of deposition of thick _________ deposits

Evaporite

A worm that burrows into sediments below the sediment-water interface is part of the pelagic fauna

False

All of geologic time is recorded in the Grand Canyon

False

All tectonic plates are moving at exactly the same velocity

False

Animals had begun to inhabit the land before plant species evolved

False

Because wind has a limited capacity to transport sediment, wind deposits are poorly sorted

False

Calcite is an example of a silicate mineral

False

Continental drift and plate tectonics refer to the same geological process.

False

Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are an example of a heterotrophic organism

False

Cyclothems are the same as sequences

False

Earth's magnetic poles coincide with the geographic (rotational poles)

False

Evolutionary change always occurs slowly over long periods of time

False

Formation of large continental glaciers causes sea level to increase

False

Glacial deposits are composed only of particles of gravel size and larger

False

Glaciers were rare during the Proterozoic, as temperatures were too warm

False

Greenstone belts are some of the youngest rocks on Earth

False

Invertebrates are organisms that have backbones

False

It was not possible to construct the geologic time scale until the invention of radiometric dating

False

Mud cracks indicate an environment that is constantly wet.

False

Oxygen levels in the atmosphere have been stable over Earth's history

False

Quartz sandstone is considered an immature sedimentary rock

False

Survival of the fittest mean that the fastest, strongest organism will survive

False

The Hawaiian Islands are the result a oceanic-oceanic convergent plate boundary

False

The eastern margin of North America has always been a passive continental margin.

False

The extinction event at the end of the Permian affected only land-dwelling organisms

False

The first vertebrates evolved on land

False

The universe is presently contracting.

False

The basic lithostratigraphic unit is a mappable unit of strata with distinctive upper and lower boundaries called a(n)____

Formation

Mechanism responsible for producing elements up to Iron on the periodic table

Fusion

What is one of the minerals that caused the environmental disaster at Picher, OK?

Galena

The time necessary for one-half of the original number of radioactive atoms of an element to decay to a stable daughter product is know as a(n) ___________

Half life

Alfred Wegner's theory of continental drift was rejected because ____

He thought the moon pushed the continents around the Earth

Throughout the Late Paleozoic, Gondwana was located

In the southern hemisphere

Composition of the Earth's core

Iron and nickel

Atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons in the nuclei are known as ___________

Isotopes

You observe a dark colored igneous rock with fine crystals that are only visible under magnification. What can be said about this rock?

It cooled quickly on earth's surface

An organism classified as an autotroph has which of the following characteristics?

It produces its own food

Fish with muscular fins attached to the body by a fleshy shat and a series of articulating bones

Lobe finned fish

The origin of amphibians from fish is an example of

Macroevolution

Molten rock material below the surface of the Earth is called _____

Magma

The three categories of rocks are classified by ______

Method of formation

The major barrier to both plant and animal inhabitation of land was

Methods of reproduction

New oceanic crust is formed at _________

Mid ocean ridges

Slices of ancient oceanic crust composed of mafic-ultramafic complexes, tectonically emplaced on to the continent are called

Ophiolites

Mass extinctions occurred at the end of the

Ordovician, Devonian, and Permian

Structures constructed in the marine environment by some skeletal material of living organisms

Organic reefs

The early atmosphere of Earth probably did not contain

Oxygen

The increase in atmospheric oxygen during the Proterozoic was caused by

Photosynthesis by cyanobacteria

The ______ states that sediment extends laterally in all directions until it thins and pinches out, or terminates, against the edge of the depositional basin

Principle of lateral continuity

What type of metamorphic rock results from the recrystallization of quartz sandstone

Quartzite

Archaeocyathid, bryozoan, and stromatoporoid fossils indicate which type of environment

Reef

Placing geologic events in a chronological order from their position in the rock record is called ____.​

Relative dating

What is happening in the mantle beneath a subduction zone?

Relatively cool mantle rock is sinking, pulling down a cold ocean slab

The degree to which particles have had their sharp edges and corners smoothed off by abrasion is ______

Rounding

Which of the following sequences most likely represents a transgression

Sandstone - shale - limestone

The first major Paleozoic transgression onto the North American craton was the ____ sequence

Sauk

Mound-like structures that represent the remains of photosynthesizing cyanobacteria are

Stromatolites

The Cambrian explosion refers to

Sudden appearance of fossils

The sedimentary environment from which coal most commonly is derived is ______

Swamp

Marie Tharp was instrumental in our understanding of _____

The shape of the ocean floor

A conglomerate that is formed by glacial processes is called

Tillite

A shell of an ancient marine bivalve is an example of a body fossil

True

Banded iron formation precipitated in oxygen-rich water

True

Black shales are especially abundant from the Late Devonian to Mississippian in North America

True

Continents have the best-puzzle like fit when placed together along their continental slopes

True

Cross bedding can form via wind or water current

True

Dark surfaces have low albedo

True

During the Cambrian, most of Earth's land mass was located in the southern hemisphere.

True

During the Paleozoic Era, cratons were covered with large bodies of water called epeiric seas

True

Erosion of the Precambrian igneous and metamorphic core of the uplifted Ancestral Rockies produced thick sequences of arkose and conglomerate

True

Fish are the earliest vertebrates

True

Fossils are remains or traces of prehistoric life that have been preserved in rocks of Earth's crust

True

Komatiites are common from the Archean eon, although none are produced in modern tectonic environments

True

Late Paleozoic limestones are used for manufacturing cement.

True

Lobe-finned fish are important in the fossil record because it is believed they share a common ancestry with amphibians

True

Microevolution results from the cumulative effects of macroevolution

True

Most of the organisms that have ever existed are now extinct

True

Part of the gill structure in jawless fish evolved into jaws

True

Phytoplankton are primary producers

True

Sedimentary structures form prior to lithification

True

Shields are the exposed portions of cratons that contain igneous and metamorphic rocks

True

The Burgess Shale is significant because it contains mostly soft-bodied fossils

True

The Carboniferous coal deposits of North America probably were derived from plants that grew in tropical climates

True

The Precambrian represents approximately 88 percent of geologic time

True

The majority of minerals on the planet are silicates

True

The moon formed after a large object collided with Earth

True

A break or gap in the geologic record resulting from erosion or nondeposition or both is a(n)_____

Unconformity

The statement that "the same facies following one another in a conformable vertical sequence will also replace one another laterally" is known as _______

Walther's law

Ediacaran faunal fossils are rare because they

Were soft bodied animals

The unique preservation of soft-bodied fauna in the Burgess Shale occurred because

animals were transported and buried in anaerobic conditions

The climate over much of Pangea was ______

arid due to a rain shadow effect caused by the position of mountain ranges

Which environments would be represented in a cyclothem?

delatic, fluvial, and continental shelf

Isotopes of the same element have _________

different numbers of neutrons, but the same number of protons

A marine transgression is a period of lower sea level

false

Put the following organisms in order of evolution from earliest to latest

fish, amphibians, and reptiles

Variation is always present in populations because

genes are reshuffled by reproduction and altered by mutations

Change in sea level is most affected by

glacial ice volumes and tectonic activity

Lord Kelvin calculated Earth was 20-400 million years old. Why was he wrong?

he didn't know the Earth had an internal heat source

Because heat and pressure affect the ratio of radioactive parent to stable daughter, ________ rocks generally are difficult to date accurately by radiometric dating

metamorphic

Uniformitarianism is the assumption that ___________

present day geological processes also occurred in the past

Which of the following contributed to the Snowball Earth glaciation events

runaway albedo effect, lower solar luminosity, weathering of silicate rocks

According to the rock cycle, a sedimentary rock can be formed from a(n)______

sediments through compaction & cementation

The theory of evolution _____

states that organisms have changed since life originated

The principle of fossil succession is based on the fact that fossils

succeed one another through time in order

What is punctuated equilibrium?

the idea that species remain stable for long periods, then evolve rapidly

After three half-lives, a radioactive element will have _____ of its original parent atoms

⅛

The oldest oceanic crust is slightly less than _____ years old

260 million years old

The age of the Earth is closest to

4,500,000,000