Chapter 1 Flashcards
George’s Cuvier documented many extinctions and he was a catastrophist. What is catastrophism?
The hypothesis that today’s geological formations resulted from catastrophic events in the past
Georges Cuvier is also known as?
pope of bones
Charles Lyell was the foremost geologist of his day and he believed that the earth was a little over ___ MYO.
300
What is uniformitarianism?
The assumption or “law” that processes identical to those of today are responsible for the past
Diversity is the result of
Decent with modification
What is homology?
A trait shared by two organisms as a result of inheritance from a common ancestor.
What is Darwin’s 1st postulate?
There is variation among individuals
What is Darwin’s 2nd postulate?
Some of the variations is heritable
What is Darwin’s 3rd postulate
Individuals vary in their success at surviving or reproducing
What is Darwin’s 4th postulate
Survival and/or reproduction is non-random
What is Lamarck’s 1st postulate?
Use or disuse causes changes in organismal structure during its lifetime
What’s Lamarck’s 2nd postulate
The structural changes that occur in an organisms lifetime are inherited by its offspring
How did uniformitarians such as Hutton and Lyell estimate the age of the Earth to be 300 MYO?
They estimated ages of rock formations based on known rates of sedimentation, erosion, etc.
Lord Kevin estimated that the age of the earth was ___ MYO by measuring the temperature of rocks and using the known rate of cooling
20
How does radiometric dating work?
An unstable isotope of naturally occurring elements are used and these isotopes decay and change into different elements or different isotopes of the same element thereby allowing scientists to count the number of decay events resulting in the age of a rock sample.
the unit of measure in radiometric dating is called?
half-life
What are the 5 factors that need to be present if an organisms is to be fossilized?
1) die near water in a dry climate
2) have bones (or hard parts)
3) don’t get scavenged
4) get buried quickly
5) low-oxygen environment
The oldest organisms to ever be fossilized is the _______. and how old was it?
Stromatolite (bacteria) ; 3.45 BYA
How many billions of years ago did the transition from single cellular to multicellular occur?
2.1 BYO
How old is the earth?
4.6 BYO
What was the name of the diverse and unique animals that dominated the oceans from 575-535 MYA?
Ediacaran Fauna
What is so special about the Burgess Shale?
It has housed the remains of over 65,000 specimens and 93 species.
What was the cambrian explosion?
A period in which there was a rapid appearance of many large and complex lifeforms.
