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Who was William Smith?
First geologist who formulated stratigraphy and drew the first proper geologic map in 1850
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What era was between 542- 250 million years ago?
Paloezoic
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What are the 7 periods in the Paleozoic era?
- Cambrian
- Ordovician
- Silurian
- Devonian
- Mississippian
- Pennsylvanian
- Permian
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What continent collided with Laurentia to form the Taconic Orogeny?
Baltica
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What continent collided with Laurentia to form the Acadian Orogeny?
Avalonia
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What continent collided with Laurentia to form the Ouachita Orogeny?
Gondwana
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What continent collided with Laurentia to form the Alleghenian Orogeny?
Gondwana
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What was the name of North America during this Paleozoic Era?
Laurentia
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After Baltica collided with Laurentia, what was it known as?
Laurasia
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How do we know there were trangressive events during the cambrian era?
You can see it today in the grand canyon. The rocks are layered sandstone,limestone, shale as with a transgression
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How do we know there were regressive events during this time period?
Due to the uncomformities of the rock layers. There is a huge section missing at the base of the cambrian since most of the continents were exposed at that time.
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Where did a passive tectonic margin become an active one?
On the east coast, the oceanic crust which was not moving began to be suducted which pulled the continents together.
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Where were the Silurian Barrier Reefs and how do we know they were there?
North America was covered by sea and barrier reefs formed in the Michigan basin. Since the continental collision threw up mountains, the basin began to evaporate and left evaporite minerals such as salts and gypsum.
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Was there a barrier reef in austrailia in this time?
Yes it was the first and a gigantic one too.
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What caused the Antler orogeny?
Small volcanic island arcs like Hawaii collided with laurentia
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What time period was there an excessive amount of meteorite impacts?
The upper devonian, the largest of which being in Nevada
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What were the ancestral Rockies?
Mountain chain that was thrown up in colorado that are fault bounded mountains as opposed to collision based.
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What is the Garden of the Gods?
The sedementary products of the ancestral Rocky Mountains
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What were the Marathon mountains caused by and what is there location?
The Ouachita Orogeny and they are located in texas
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What caused the vast coal deposits around the world?
Around the edges of continents there were vast swamplands which over time turn into coal after they were covered
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What evidence is there that there was an ice sheet covering Godwana?
There is evidence of glaciation across the southern continents which means that they were all in the south pole at one point and connected together
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Where are the permian reefs located?
Today they are in Texas and they are actually the Guadelupe mountains
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What is the significance of Siberia and the Ural Mountains?
They were the final piece to form Pangea
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What is the Cambrian Explosion?
When suddenly there was an explosion of life in the rock record, from almost nothing to almost everything in 20million years
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What appeared during the cambrian explosion?
All the major phyla which we see today
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What was the most abundant form of life during the cambrian explosion?
The trilobites, they were very complicated organisms and there were many different varieties
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What is the significance of the precambrian gap?
It seemed as if though the small shelly fauna went extinct before the cambrian explosion
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What is the significance of the Burgess Shale?
A unique window into the cambrian explosion with almost 100% of preservation of everything that lived in that time.
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Who discovered the burgess shale?
Charles Walcott
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What do "dead ends" refer to when talking about the Burgess Shale?
Evolutionary experiments that died out before the successful ones stayed
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What is Pikaia?
The first Chordate lifeform, or first life with a spinal cord
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What period were jawless fish from and what were they like?
The cambrian, they were not very good swimmers and most evolved a sort of bony covering.
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What time period did jawed fish evolve?
The silurian, the jaw made much more efficient eating, jaw evolved from the gil arches
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What were the armored fish?
Placoderms, the were like swimming tanks, they were the top of the food chain in this era
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What are Cartilagenous fish and when did they evolve?
They are sharke and evolved in the devonian
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What types of bony fish are there and when did they evolve?
Ray finned and lobe finned and they evolved in the devonian
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Which were more efficient swimmers ray finned or lobe finned fish?
Ray finned since they had a simple bony arrangement in their fins. The lobe finned fishes had more complex bony arrangement and were more muscular
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What did the lung fish evolve from?
The lobe finned fish
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How did the lung evolve?
It was originally a swim bladder so the fish could control its buoyancy, it then changed so the fish could extract oxygen easier in shallow low oxygenated waters to escape from predators
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How and when did then amphibians evolve?
They evolved from lung fish and eventually evolved proper limbs to walk on land in the devonian.
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How do we know this is when they evolved?
Based on anatomical similarites to amphibians today
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What was Tiktaalik?
A perfect cross between a lung fish and an amphibian. The missing link technically
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Why was there such a large community of amphibians until the Pennsylvanian?
There was no competition on land so it did not matter how slow these animals were.
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What are amniotes and when did they evolve?
The first reptiles that could lay a hard shelled egg in the mississippian
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What three lineages do we clearly see?
- Reptiles
- Turtles
- Mammal-like reptiles
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What evidence is there that this is when reptiles evolved?
Anatomical similarites and these animals were found away from the water.
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What does rapid diversification refer to?
The reptiles defered so much that some of them actually went back to the sea
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What are Diapsids?
reptiles with two holes in their skull
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What were the archosaurs?
Reptiles with three holes in their skull
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What were the mammal like reptiles?
reptiles with one hole and distinct canine teeth
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What were the sail backs?
Mammal like reptiles which used a large sail on their backs for temperature regulation, they could warm their bodies quickly and get a head start on other animals and they are well preserved in Texas
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What was different about the mammal like reptiles?
Many of them were thought to be warm-blooded and furry
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Who was the active mammal like reptile predator?
Gorgonopsians
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What was the significance of the spores in the ordovician?
This was how plants reproduced in that time frame. They would grow and eventually release spores which would make more plants and they were very primitive
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What was Cooksonia?
First plant in the silurian
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Was there a lot of plant life in this mississippian?
Yes it was very lush and the plants began to diversify greatly
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What were the insects like in the Devonian?
Almost all the insects we have today evolved in the devonian since they evolved so quickly
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Were insects the same size as they are today?
No, they were gigantic, since there was so much oxygen in the air due to the lush forests, insects grew to outrageous sizes.
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What happened during the permian extinction?
Largest extinction event in earths history, 95% of life went extinct. Pangeas formation caused the land to become desertous, marine environments vanished and when the siberia joined pangea a massive outflow of lava and toxic gases were released causing the siberian traps. Meteorite impacts also occurred at the end of the permian.
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