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
