Book Glossary Flashcards - Historical_Geology
The origin of life from nonliving matter.
Abiogenesis
A widespread succession of Pennsylvanian and Permian sedimentary rocks bounded above and below by unconformities; deposited during a transgressive–regressive cycle of the Absaroka Sea.
Absaroka Sequence
Assigning an age in years before the present to geologic events; absolute dates are determined by radioactive decay dating techniques.
Absolute dating
A Devonian episode of mountain building in the northern Appalachian mobile belt resulting from a collision of Baltica with Laurentia.
Acadian orogeny
Pennsylvanian to Permian mountain building in the Appalachian mobile belt from New York to Alabama.
Alleghenian orogeny
A variant form of a single gene.
Allele
Model for the origin of a new species from a small population that became isolated from its parent population.
Allopatric speciation
A cone-shaped accumulation of mostly sand and gravel where a stream flows from a mountain valley onto an adjacent lowland.
Alluvial fan
A linear zone of deformation extending from the Atlantic eastward across southern Europe and North Africa, through the Middle East and into Southeast Asia.
Alpine–Himalayan orogenic belt
A Late Mesozoic–Early Cenozoic episode of mountain building affecting southern Europe and North Africa.
Alpine orogeny
An egg in which an embryo develops in a liquid-filled cavity (the amnion); and a waste sac is present as well as a yolk sac for nourishment.
Amniote egg
Refers to organisms that do not depend on oxygen for respiration.
Anaerobic
Body part, such as wings of insects and birds, that serves the same function but differs in structure and development.
Analogous structure
Late Paleozoic uplift in the southwestern part of the North American craton.
Ancestral Rockies
Any member of the primate suborder Anthropoidea; includes New World and Old World monkeys, apes, and humans.
Anthropoid
A Late Devonian to Mississippian episode of mountain building that affected the Cordilleran mobile belt from Nevada to Alberta, Canada.
Antler orogeny
A long narrow region of tectonic activity along the eastern margin of the North American craton extending from Newfoundland to Georgia.
Appalachian mobile belt
The oldest positively identified fossil bird; it had feathers but retained many reptile characteristics; from Jurassic rocks in Germany.
Archaeopteryx
A term referring to the ruling reptiles—dinosaurs, pterosaurs, crocodiles, and birds.
Archosaur
The practice of selectively breeding plants and animals with desirable traits.
Artificial selection
The mammalian order whose members have two or four toes; the even-toed hoofed mammals such as deer, goats, sheep, antelope, bison, swine, and camels.
Artiodactyla
Part of the upper mantle over which the lithosphere moves; it behaves as a plastic and flows.
Asthenosphere
The broad, low relief area of eastern North America extending from the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic shoreline.
Atlantic Coastal Plain
The smallest unit of matter that retains the characteristics of an element.
Atom
The total number of protons and neutrons in an atom’s nucleus.
Atomic mass number
The number of protons in an atom’s nucleus.
Atomic number
A collective term for all species of the extinct genus Australopithecus that existed in South Africa during the Pliocene and Pleistocene.
Australopithecine
Describes organisms that synthesize their organic nutrients from inorganic raw materials; photosynthesizing bacteria and plants are autotrophs.
Autotrophic
A marine basin, such as the Sea of Japan, between a volcanic island arc and a continent; probably forms by back-arc spreading.
Back-arc marginal basin
One of six major Paleozoic continents; composed of Russia west of the Ural Mountains, Scandinavia, Poland, and northern Germany.
Baltica
Sedimentary rocks made up of alternating thin layers of chert and iron minerals, mostly the iron oxides hematite and magnetite.
Banded iron formation (BIF)
A long sand body more or less parallel with a shoreline but separated from it by a lagoon.
Barrier island
An area of Cenozoic block-faulting centered on Nevada but extending into adjacent states and northern Mexico.
Basin and Range Province
All bottom-dwelling marine organisms that live on the seafloor or within seafloor sediments.
Benthos
A theory for the evolution of the universe from a dense, hot state followed by expansion, cooling, and a less dense state.
Big Bang
Any feature such as tracks, trails, and burrows in sedimentary rocks produced by the activities of organisms.
Biogenic sedimentary structure
The churning of sediment by organisms that burrow through it.
Bioturbation
A unit of sedimentary rock defined solely by its fossil content.
Biostratigraphic unit
All biostratigraphic units such as range zones and concurrent range zones.
Biozone
Walking on two legs as a means of locomotion as in birds and humans.
Bipedal
A submarine hydrothermal vent that emits a plume of black water colored by dissolved minerals.
Black smoker
The shells, teeth, bones, or (rarely) the soft parts of organisms preserved in the fossil record.
Body fossil
The processes whereby atoms join with other atoms.
Bonding
Members of the class Osteichthyes that evolved during the Devonian; characterized by a bony internal skeleton; includes the ray-finned fishes and the lobe-finned fishes.
Bony fish
A stream with an intricate network of dividing and rejoining channels.
Braided stream
An animal that eats tender shoots, twigs, and leaves.
Browser
A Silurian–Devonian episode of mountain building that took place along the northwestern margin of Baltica, resulting from the collision of Baltica with Laurentia.
Caledonian orogeny
The Precambrian shield in North America; mostly in Canada but also exposed in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New York.
Canadian shield
An absolute dating technique relying on the ratio of C14 to C12 in organic substances; useful back to about 70,000 years ago.
Carbon 14 dating
Any mineral with the negatively charged carbonate ion (CO3)-2 (e.g., calcite [CaCO3] and dolomite [CaMg(CO3)2]).
Carbonate mineral
Any rock composed mostly of carbonate minerals (such as limestone and dolostone).
Carbonate rock
A pair of specialized shearing teeth in members of the mammal order Carnivora.
Carnassials
An order of mammals consisting of meat eaters such as dogs, cats, bears, weasels, and seals.
Carnivora
Any animal that eats other animals, living or dead, as a source of nutrients.
Carnivore-scavenger
Fish such as living sharks and their living and extinct relatives that have an internal skeleton of cartilage.
Cartilaginous fish
A mountain range made up of volcanic rock stretching from northern California through Oregon and Washington and into British Columbia, Canada.
Cascade Range
A replica of an object such as a shell or bone formed when a mold of that object is filled by sediment or minerals.
Cast
A concept proposed by Baron Georges Cuvier explaining Earth’s physical and biologic history by sudden, worldwide catastrophes; also holds that geologic processes acted with much greater intensity during the past.
Catastrophism
A Devonian clastic wedge deposited adjacent to the highlands that formed during the Acadian orogeny.
Catskill Delta
The mammal order that includes whales, porpoises, and dolphins.
Cetacea
Rock formed of minerals derived from materials dissolved during weathering.
Chemical sedimentary rock
One of six major Paleozoic continents; composed of all Southeast Asia, including China, Indochina, part of Thailand, and the Malay Peninsula.
China
Any member of the phylum Chordata, all of which have a notochord, dorsal hollow nerve cord, and gill slits at some time during their life cycle.
Chordate
Complex, double-stranded, helical molecule of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA); specific segments of chromosome are genes.
Chromosome
One of two major Mesozoic-Cenozoic areas of large-scale deformation and the origin of mountains; includes orogens in South and Central America, the North American Cordillera, and the Aleutian, Japan, and Philippine arcs.
Circum-Pacific orogenic belt
A steep-walled, bowl-shaped depression formed on a mountainside by glacial erosion.
Cirque
A type of analysis of organisms in which they are grouped together on the basis of derived as opposed to primitive characteristics.
Cladistics
A diagram showing the relationships among members of a clade, including their most recent common ancestor.
Cladogram
An extensive accumulation of mostly detrital sedimentary rocks eroded from and deposited adjacent to an area of uplift, as in the Catskill Delta or Queenston Delta.
Clastic wedge
A vast upland area in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico with only slightly deformed Phanerozoic rocks, deep canyons, and volcanic mountains.
Colorado Plateau
A substance made up of different atoms bonded together (such as water [H2O] and quartz [SiO2]).
Compound
A biozone established by plotting the overlapping geologic ranges of fossils.
Concurrent range zone
Refers to a sequence of sedimentary rocks deposited one after the other with no or only minor discontinuities resulting from nondeposition or erosion.
Conformable
Metamorphism taking place adjacent to a body of magma (a pluton) or beneath a lava flow from heat and chemically active fluids.
Contact metamorphism
The process whereby continents grow by additions of Earth materials along their margins.
Continental accretion
A convergent plate boundary along which two continental lithospheric plates collide, such as the collision of India with Asia.
Continental–continental plate boundary
The theory proposed by Alfred Wegener that all continents were once joined into a single landmass that broke apart with the various fragments (continents) moving with respect to one another.
Continental drift
A glacier covering at least 50,000 km2 and unconfined by topography. Also called an ice sheet.
Continental glacier
An area in North America made up of the Great Plains and the Central Lowlands, bounded by the Rocky Mountains, the Canadian shield, the Appalachian Mountains, and parts of the Gulf Coastal Plain.
Continental interior
Red-colored rock, especially mudrock and sandstone, on the continents. Iron oxides account for their color.
Continental red bed
The gently sloping part of the seafloor lying between the base of the continental slope and the deep seafloor.
Continental rise
The area where the seafloor slopes gently seaward between a shoreline and the continental slope.
Continental shelf
The relatively steep part of the seafloor between the continental shelf and continental rise or an oceanic trench.
Continental slope
The origin of similar features in distantly related organisms as they adapt in comparable ways, such as ichthyosaurs and porpoises.
Convergent evolution
The boundary between two plates that move toward one another.
Convergent plate boundary
An area of extensive deformation in western North America bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Great Plains; it extends north–south from Alaska into central Mexico.
Cordilleran mobile belt
A period of deformation affecting the western part of North America from Jurassic to Early Cenozoic time; divided into three phases known as the Nevadan, Sevier, and Laramide orogenies.
Cordilleran orogeny
The inner part of Earth from a depth of about 2900 km consisting of a liquid outer part and a solid inner part; probably composed mostly of iron and nickel.
Core
Demonstration of the physical continuity of stratigraphic units over an area; also matching up time-equivalent events in different areas.
Correlation
Name applied to a stable nucleus of a continent consisting of a Precambrian shield and a platform of buried ancient rocks.
Craton
A widespread association of sedimentary rocks bounded above and below by unconformities that were deposited during a transgressive–regressive cycle of an epeiric sea, such as the Sauk Sequence.
Cratonic sequence
A Late Cretaceous arm of the sea that effectively divided North America into two large landmasses.
Cretaceous Interior Seaway
A race of Homo sapiens that lived mostly in Europe from 35,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Cro-Magnon
A type of bedding in which individual layers are deposited at an angle to the surface on which they accumulate, as in sand dunes.
Cross-bedding
A specific type of lobe-finned fish that had lungs.
Crossopterygian
The upper part of Earth’s lithosphere, which is separated from the mantle by the Moho; consists of continental crust with an overall granitic composition and thinner, denser oceanic crust made up of basalt and gabbro.
Crust
A solid with its atoms arranged in a regular three-dimensional framework.
Crystalline solid
The temperature at which iron-bearing minerals in a cooling magma attain their magnetism.
Curie point
A sequence of cyclically repeated sedimentary rocks resulting from alternating periods of marine and nonmarine deposition; commonly contain a coal bed.
Cyclothem
A type of therapsid (advanced mammal-like reptile); ancestors of mammals are among the cynodonts.
Cynodont
A deposit of sediment where a stream or river enters a lake or the ocean.
Delta
The chemical substance of which chromosomes are composed.
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
Any area where sediment is deposited; a depositional site where physical, chemical, and biological processes operate to yield a distinctive kind of deposit.
Depositional environment
Rock made up of the solid particles derived from pre-existing rocks as in sandstone.
Detrital sedimentary rock
Any of the Mesozoic reptiles belonging to the orders Saurischia and Ornithischia.
Dinosaur
A type of unconformity above and below which the strata are parallel.
Disconformity
The diversification of a species into two or more descendant species.
Divergent evolution
The boundary between two plates that move apart; characterized by seismicity, volcanism, and the origin of new oceanic lithosphere.
Divergent plate boundary
A collective term for all sediment deposited by glacial activity; includes till deposited directly by ice, and outwash deposited by streams discharging from glaciers.
Drift
Metamorphism in fault zones where rocks are subjected to high differential pressure.
Dynamic metamorphism
Any of the cold-blooded vertebrates such as amphibians and reptiles; animals that depend on external heat
Ectotherm
Name for all Late Proterozoic faunas with animal fossils similar to those of the Ediacara fauna of Australia.
Ediacaran fauna
A substance composed of only one kind of atom (such as calcium [Ca] or silicon [Si]).
Element
A pile or ridge of rubble deposited at the terminus of a glacier.
End moraine
A type of mutually beneficial symbiosis in which one symbiont lives within the other.
Endosymbiosis
Any of the warm-blooded vertebrates such as birds and mammals who maintain their body temperature within narrow limits by internal processes.
Endotherm
A broad shallow sea that covers part of a continent; six epeiric seas were present in North America during the Phanerozoic Eon, such as the Sauk Sea.
Epeiric sea
A cell with an internal membrane-bounded nucleus containing chromosomes and other internal structures such as mitochondria that are not present in prokaryotic cells.
Eukaryotic cell
Sedimentary rock formed by inorganic chemical precipitation from evaporating water (for example, rock salt and rock gypsum).
Evaporite
An igneous rock that forms as lava cools and crystallizes or when pyroclastic materials are consolidated.
Extrusive igneous rock
A Late Mesozoic–Cenozoic oceanic plate that was largely subducted beneath North America; the Cocos and Juan de Fuca plates are remnants.
Farallon plate
The dating process in which small linear tracks (fission tracks) resulting from alpha decay are counted in mineral crystals.
Fission-track dating
Relating to streams and rivers and their deposits.
Fluvial
The basic lithostratigraphic unit; a mappable unit of strata with distinctive upper and lower boundaries.
Formation
Remains or traces of prehistoric organisms preserved in rocks.
Fossil
A specific segment of a chromosome constituting the basic unit of heredity.
Gene
A diagram showing a composite column of rocks arranged with the oldest at the bottom followed upward by progressively younger rocks.
Geologic column
The record of prehistoric physical and biologic events preserved in rocks.
Geologic record
A chart arranged so that the designation for the earliest part of geologic time appears at the bottom followed upward by progressively younger
time designations.
Geologic time scale
A time of extensive glaciation that occurred several times in North America during the Pleistocene.
Glacial stage
A mass of ice on land that moves by plastic flow and basal slip.
Glacier
A Late Paleozoic association of plants found only on the Southern Hemisphere continents and India; named after its best-known genus, Glossopteris.
Glossopteris flora
One of six major Paleozoic continents; composed of South America, Africa, Australia, India, and parts of Southern Europe, Arabia, and Florida.
Gondwana
A sediment layer in which grain size decreases from the bottom up.
Graded bedding
One of the two main rock associations found in areas of Archean rocks.
Granite-gneiss complex
An animal that eats low-growing vegetation, especially grasses. (See browser.)
Grazer
A linear or podlike association of rocks particularly common in Archaean terranes; typically synclinal and consists of lower and middle volcanic units and an upper sedimentary unit.
Greenstone belt
An episode of deformation that took place in the eastern United States and Canada during the Neoproterozoic.
Grenville orogeny
