Geology Quiz 7

When did the Basin and Range province in Nevada and New Mexico form?

17 million

When did the first abundant fossil evidence appear?

300 million to 580 million years ago

When did the vertebrates move to colonize land?

370 million years ago during the Devonian Period.

What is the age of the Earth accepted by most scientists today?

4.54 billion years old

What is a stromatolite and how does it form? Do these structures still exist today?

A calcareous mound built up of layers of lime-secreting cyanobacteria and trapped sediment, found in Precambrian rocks as the earliest known fossils, and still being formed in lagoons in Australasia.

What is a trace fossil?

A fossil of a footprint, trail, burrow, or other trace of an animal rather than of the animal itself.

When did the Appalachian mountains form?

About 270 million years ago

Where did most of the early human evolution take place?

Africa

What is the difference between a gymnosperm and angiosperm and when did each of these two evolve and diversify?

Angiosperms, also called flowering plants, have seeds that are enclosed within an ovary (usually a fruit), while gymnosperms have no flowers or fruits, and have unenclosed or "naked" seeds on the surface of scales or leaves. Gymnosperm seeds are often configured as cones. The characteristics that differentiate angiosperms from gymnosperms include flowers, fruits, and endosperm in the seeds. Hundreds of millions of years ago, gymnosperms were the only kind of plant life on Earth. Between 250 and 200 million years ago, angiosperms started to evolve. Now, angiosperms are more widely distributed and populous, and can be considered the dominant plant life on the planet. Angiosperms comprise a far more diverse range of plants, with a range of 250,000 to 400,000 species. They inhabit every kind of land and aquatic environment except the most extreme habitats. Angiosperms may be dicots or monocots.

What are banded iron formations and when did they form?

Banded iron formations are thought to have formed in sea water as the result of oxygen production by photosynthetic cyanobacteria. The oxygen combined with dissolved iron in Earth's oceans to form insoluble iron oxides, which precipitated out, forming a thin layer on the ocean floor.

What geologic time period is also known as "ancient life"? "age of fishes"? "age of reptiles"? "age of mammals"

Cambrian: Ancient life Devonian: Age of fishes Mesozoic: Age of reptiles Cenozoic: Age of mammals

Which geologic period is characterized by the first forests with large trees?

Carboniferous Period

Know the difference between carbonization, permineralizaton, and the development of molds and casts.

Carbonization: The process by which only the residual carbon of the organism remains. Permineralization: A process of fossilization in which mineral deposits form internal casts of organisms.

When was the "age of flowering plants"?

Cenozoic

Which period is known as the "age of fishes"?

Devonian Period

Know the differences among disconformities, angular unconformities, and nonconformities. BE able to recognize these in a sketch

Disconformity: A break in a sedimentary sequence which does involve a difference of inclination between the strata on both sides of the break Angular unconformity: An unconformity where horizontally parallel strata of sedimentary rock are deposited on tilted and eroded layers, producing an angular discordance with the overlying horizontal layers. Nonconformity: A surface of contact between two groups of unconformable rocks.

What is the order of divisions of the geologic time scale beginning with the longest time interval and ending with the shortest?

Eon, era, period, epoch

What were the first elements to form after the big bang?

Hydrogen and Helium

Of what gases was Earth's earliest atmosphere made?

Hydrogen, Helium, and Carbon dioxide

Compare and contrast the patterns of life in the Paleozoic era to the Mesozoic era. What are the major differences between these two eras? Are there similarities or similar trends?

In the Paleozoic Era the trilobites, fish, land plants, and amphibians evolved throughout the Paleozoic Era. In the Mesozoic Era birds, reptiles, mammals, and flowering plants appeared or evolved throughout the Mesozoic Era.

When did Pangaea form and when did it break up?

It formed 335 million years ago and drifted 175 million years ago.

What organism was the fossil Archaeopteryx and why is it significant?

It is significant because it is considered the first bird.

Earth is in the Goldilocks zone - what does this mean? If Earth were larger, what would its atmosphere be like? What would happen if it were smaller?

It means Earth is the perfect distance from the Sun for water to remain a liquid. If Earth's diameter were doubled to about 16,000 miles, the planet's mass would increase eight times, and the force of gravity on the planet would be twice as strong. If gravity were twice as strong , bodies possessing the same construction and mass as our flora and fauna would weigh twice as much and would collapse. If the Earth was smaller it would be uninhabitable.

What caused the extinction of large mammals, such as Mastodons and Mammoths, in the Pleistocene?

Over hunting

Which of the following gases was not part of Earth's original atmosphere?

Oxygen

What term refers to the investigative process by which geologists identify and match sedimentary strata and other rocks of the same ages in different areas

Super matching

What is the order of events in the formation of early Earth?

The Earth forms, the Earth-Moon collision, magma ocean, first continents.

What happened at the end of the Permian? The Cretaceous?

The Permian Extinction was the end result. 95% of all marine life and 70% of all land organisms died off. The Cretaceous Period was ended by a massive meteor.

In what part of North America did plate interactions give rise to many events of mountain building, volcanism, and earthquakes in the Cenozoic?

The Western Margin

What is meant by the principle of faunal succession?

The law of faunal succession based on the observation that sedimentary rock strata contain fossilized flora and fauna, and that these fossils succeed each other vertically in a specific, reliable order that can be identified over wide horizontal distances.

What criteria are necessary for an organisms become fossilized.

The organism must have hard parts such as: shells, bones, wood, teeth tissue; the remains must survive destruction after death; and the remains must be buried quickly to avoid decomposition.

How did earth's ocean and atmosphere form?

Volcanic outgassing

In what geologic period did tropical swamps extended across North America, eventually becoming the vast coal deposits?

Pennsylvanian

What term refers to the process in which plants use light energy to synthesize food sugars from carbon dioxide?

Photosynthesis

What is the source of free oxygen in the atmosphere?

Plants and the process of photosynthesis

How much of the geologic record is represented by the Precambrian? By the Phanerozoic?

Precambrian 88% Phanerozoic 12%

What is the difference between a prokaryote and an eukaryote?

Prokaryotes are organisms that consist of a single prokaryotic cell. Eukaryotic cells are found in plants, animals, fungi, and protists.

Which isotopic method would be best for dating an object from the historic past, or recent geologic history?

Radiocarbon dating

Compare and contrast relative age dating with radiometric age dating. What is a limitation (if any) of each?

Relative dating can be helpful for determining the relative age of a geologic structure. However, it is simply a guess and requires prior knowledge of existing structures to compare. Radiometric age dating helps determine a numeric age using radiometric isotopes. However, it requires speculation as well. There is no way of actually knowing the actual age of radiometric isotopes.