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63 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
Nicolas Steno |
Father of law of superposition, principle of original horizontality and principle of lateral continuity |
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Law of original horizontality |
When layers of rock are originally put down, they are horizontal because of gravity |
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Law of Superposition |
Sedimentary layers are deposited in a time sequence, with the oldest on the bottom and the youngest on the top |
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Law of Faunal (Floral) 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 wide horizontal distances |
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First Appearance |
When something evolved |
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Last Appearance |
When something went extinct |
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Index Fossil |
Organism that lives for a brief period of time; help put time constraint on when things lived in the past |
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Fossils |
Remnants or traces of ancient living organisms; form when organisms become buried with sediment |
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Body Fossil |
Whole bodies or pieces of bodies of once living organism |
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Trace Fossil |
Preserved evidence of biological activity of a once living organism; footprints, feces, resting or hiding places |
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Absolute Dating |
Comparing using numbers |
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Radioactive Decay |
Type of absolute dating using Half life |
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Relative Dating |
Comparing things without numbers |
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Biostratigraphy |
Type of relative dating; studying the fossils in rock layers |
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Half Life |
The time it takes half an apparent isotope to decay to the daughter isotope |
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Cyrptozoic, Phanerozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, Quaternary |
Biological Time Scale |
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Plate Tectonics |
Large segments of the outer part of the Earth (lithospheric plates) move relative to one another over the athenosphere (viscous fluid) |
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Evidence for Plate Techtonics |
Obvious fit of continents, Glaciers and climate belts seem to match across continents, if continents were connected-one large ice cap, similar fossils separated by oceans, rock type and structural similarities |
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Alfred Wegener |
Father of continental drift |
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Theory of continental drift |
Low density continents "floating" on high density ocean floor rocks and "sailing" through them; thrown out and theory of plate tectonics was born |
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Divergent |
Plate tectonics; plates moving away from each other |
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Convergent |
Plate tectonics; plates come together |
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Straight Slip |
Plate tectonics; plates move side to side |
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Pangea |
Supercontinent that existed during the late paleozoic and early mesozoic eras |
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Life |
A state characterized by the capacity for self-replication and self-regulation |
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Prokaryotes |
Have a cell membrane but no nucleus |
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Eukaryotes |
Cell membrane, nucleus with DNA, organelles |
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Autotrophic |
"Self-feeding;" ex. photosynthesis or chemosynthesis |
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Heterotrophic |
"Other-feeding;" feeds on other organisms |
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5 Mass Extinction |
End-Permian, End-Orvician, Late Devonian, End-Triassic, End-Cretaceous |
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Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species |
Linnaean Classification System |
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Georges Cuvier |
Father of Vertebrate Paleontology; developed idea of Catastrophism |
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Catastrophism |
the idea that the Earth has been affected by sudden, short-lived, violent events that were sometimes worldwide in scope |
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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck |
Proposed the idea of acquired traits |
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Charles Lyell |
Wrote "Principles of Geology;" Proposed the idea of uniformitarianism |
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Uniformitarianism |
The present is the key to the past |
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Charles Darwin |
Spent 5 year collecting on the HMS Beagle |
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Evolution |
Descent with modification; change in a biological species through time; change in gene frequencies in a population through time |
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Natural Selection |
Traits are inherited from a parent to off spring; organisms vary; too many offspring are produced to survive; organisms with traits suited to environment will survive and reproduce |
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Evidence for Evolution |
The comparison of similarities and differences in anatomy (structure) of different kinds of animals; homology, vestigial structures, embryology, biogeography, experimental evidence |
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Analogy |
Structures which serve similar functions but which derive from different origins |
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Homology |
Structures deriving from similar origins, exhibiting a common underlying plan and serving similar purposes |
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Analogy |
Structures which serve similar functions but which derive from different origins |
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Vestigial Structures |
Structures that remain in an organism but serve no purpose |
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Embryology |
The Study of the development of an organism |
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Bioeography |
The study of patterns and distributions of organisms on Earth |
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Experimental Evidence for Evolution |
Man-made, or artificial selections shows the effects of selection within the relatively short time-period of recorded human history; selective breeding or artificial breeding |
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Species |
An array of populations; interbreeding; reproductively isolated from other populations; in the natural state |
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Phylogenetic Systematics |
Classification method, which uses homologous characters to draw evolutionary relationships through time between ancestors and descendants |
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Cladistics |
Classification method, which uses specific homologous characters to draw evolutionary interpretations between organisms |
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Plesiomorph |
A primitive character (an old character inherited from ancestors |
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Apomorph |
Derived character (a newly evolved character) |
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Symplesiomorph |
A shared primitive character |
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Synapomorph |
A shared derived character |
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Richard Owen |
Coined the term "Dinosauria" |
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Dinosauria |
"Terrible Lizard" |
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Monophyletic/Holophyletic |
All members have a single common ancestor |
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Polyphyletic |
Members are descended from different ancestors |
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Paraphyletic |
Some members are descendants of a single common ancestor |
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Cambrian Explosion |
First conspicuous fossil record |
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Trilobites |
Early Cambrian...among the most successful of all early animals, roaming the oceans for over 270 million years |
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Exoskeletons |
the external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body; largely evolved during the Cambrian Explosion |
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Notochord |
Nerve running along the back of the body |