Biology Lecture, Ch 25 vocab

  1. Fossils
    • the preserved remains of ancient organisms
    • they can tell a great deal about body forms of organisms that lived long ago
  2. sedimentary rock
    • rocks formed by the accumulation of grains on the bottom of bodies of water
    • if undisturbed, the oldest layer (strata) lies at the bottom while the newer at the top
  3. strata
    a layer of sedimentary rock
  4. Half-life
    a successive time interval in which half the remaining radioactive material of the radioisotope decays and becomes a different more stable isotope
  5. paleomagnetic dating
    • a method that relates the ages of rocks to patterns of Earth's magnetism (this changes over time)
    • rocks preserve magnetic fields
  6. plate techtonics
    the study of the movement of major land masses
  7. continental drift
    the movement of lithospheric plates and the continents they contain
  8. mass extinction
    • caused by changing physical parameters
    • when a large proportion of a species that are living at the time disappear.
  9. biota
    an assemblage of all organisms of all kinds living at a particular time or place
  10. Flora
    all the plants living at a particular time or place
  11. Fauna
    all of the animals living at a particular time or place
  12. Precambrian
    • 3 billion years ago
    • shallow seas became populated with life
    • life = microscopic prokaryotes (eukaryotes evolved 1/2 way through
  13. Cambrian explosion
    • a rapid diversification of life
    • happened before cambrian period
  14. amnioties
    • vertebrates with well protected eggs that can be laid in dry places
    • resulted from split of the terrestrial vertebrate lineage
  15. Pangea
    A supercontinent created from all the continents that exists today being connected.
  16. Laurasia
    • Pangea divided into 2 and created this and Gondwana
    • This was the northern half
  17. Gondwana
    • the other half that resulted from Pangea splitting into 2
    • this is the southern half
Author
kickenbugg
ID
68777
Card Set
Biology Lecture, Ch 25 vocab
Description
Ch 25 "A history of Life on Earth"
Updated