Chapter-2 Historical Geology Flashcards
Study of changes to earth and life in time and space.
Historical Geology
Types of ages
Relative Time (Relative Age) Absolute Time (Absolute Age)
Measurement of time using comparison methods.
Relative Time ( Relative Age )
Measurement of time using actual numbers.
Absolute Time ( Absolute Age )
Measuring Earth’s Relative Age
Use of Rocks
Use of faults to determine relative rock age layers abd the order in which event happened
Measuring Earth’s Absolute age
Radioactive Dating
Half-life
The breaking down of atoms to form different isotopes of the same element or completely new element.
Radioactive Dating
The amount of time it takes for half of the original atoms to decay.
Half-life
Fundamental Theories of Historical Geology
Uniformitarianism
Catastrophism
Suggested that the landscape developed over long periods of time through a variety of slow geologic and geomorphic processes.
Theory of Uniformitarianism
Theory proposed by James Huttonin 1785, which was based only on natural history, which was later expanded by Charles Lyell in the 1830s.
Theory of Uniformitarianism
Lyell’ uniformitarianism propositions, according to Reijer Hooykas in 1963
Uniformity of Law
Uniformity of Methodology
Uniformity of kind
Uniformity of Degree
Laws of nature are constant across time and space.
Uniformity of Law
Appropriate hypotheses for explaining the geological past are those with analogy today.
Uniformity of Methdology
Past and present causes are all of the same kind, have the same energy, and produce the same effects.
Uniformity of Kind
Geological circumstances have remained the same over time.
Uniformity of Degree
Theory that says: The idea that the Earth has been affected by sudden, short-lived, violent events that were sometimes worldwide in scope.
Theory of Catastrophism
First popularized by Georges Cuvier on the 19th century, which proposed that new life forms had moved from other areas after local floods.
Theory of Catastrophism
Geological epochs had ended woth violent and sudden natural catastrophes such as great floods, formation of major mountain chains or asteroid impact.
Theory of Catastrophism
formerly Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction event, about 66 million years ago
Cretaceous-Paleogene Event
a large planetismal somehow impacted the early earth, blew out rocky debris, remelted it and formed the moon , about 4.5 billion years ago.
Giant Impact Theory
distinct surface between two unlike bodies of rocks.
Contact
single layer/bed of rock
Startum
multiple layers/beds of rocks
Strata