FINALS - Day 1 - Historical Geology Flashcards
The first extinction was dated back to how many million years ago?
440 MYA
The first extinction was also referred to as _________.
Ordovician-Silurian Extinction
During the Ordovician-Silurian Extinction, which organisms died out?
small marine invertebrates including species of brachiopods, trilobites, bivalves, and corals
Which extinction occurred 365 MYA?
Devonian Extinction
During this extinction, tropical marine species were most impacted. Which specific species went extinct during this extinction?
jawless fish, brachiopods, ammonites, and trilobites
Which extinction event is dubbed as the largest mass extinction event in Earth’s history that affected a wide range of species, including vertebrates?
Permian-Triassic Extinction
The Permian-Triassic Extinction took place _____ MYA.
250 MYA
This extinction event happened 210 MYA.
Triassic-Jurassic Extinction
The Triassic-Jurassic Extinction eradicated vertebrate species on land which allowed which species to flourish?
Dinosaurs (RAWR)
Which extinction event took place 65 MYA?
Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction
Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction is also referred to as _______ because it happened at the end of the Cretaceous period and the beginning of the Tertiary period.
K-T Extinction. Scientists used K instead of C because C is a shorthand for Cambrian.
Which specific type of dinosaurs were wiped out during the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction?
Non-avian Dinosaurs
This is a site of exceptional fossilization, in which soft tissue preservation and other highly detailed remains can be retained and recovered.
Lagerstätte
Lagerstätte (plural Lagerstätten) is a German term that directly translates to ______.
storage place
The majority of lagerstätten form when organic remains end up preserved in a way in where a specific element cannot reach it. Which element is this?
Oxygen
What are the two major forms of lagerstätte?
konzentrat-lagerstätten and konservativ-lagerstätten
These are areas of high concentration of fossil remains, places like bone beds where a lot of animals died all at once or repeatedly in roughly the same spot.
konzentrat-lagerstätten
This certain type of lagerstätte preserve soft-bodied, typically hard-to-fossilize organisms like invertebrates with the same detail that they preserve more typically abundant organisms.
konservativ-lagerstätten
Name a famous example of a konzentrat-lagerstätten.
La Brea Tar Pits
Name a famous example of a konservativ-lagerstätten.
Burgess Shale
Which large mammalian megafauna fossils from the Pleistocene epoch are found in La Brea Tar Pits?
mammoths and giant ground sloths
Which paleontologist discovered the 508 million-year-old shale in 1909?
Charles Wolcott
Which anomalous organism found in the Burgess Shale puzzled scientists for years as to which end was back, front, up or down?
Hallucigenia
This lagerstätte in Wyoming is made up of three fossil lakes dating back about 55 million years ago to the Eocene epoch of the Paleogene period and showcases the much milder and even climate of the region at this time.
Green River Formation
This German lagerstätte dates back to the Jurassic period of the Mesozoic era, during the middle of the age of dinosaurs about 150 million years ago. This is where one of the first and most famous fossil birds was found, Archaeopteryx lithographica, which gave paleontologists new questions and answers regarding the origin of birds.
Solnhofen Limestone
This konservativ-lagerstätte, located in Illinois in the United States, can be divided mainly between marine and freshwater fauna, preserved together in what was thought to be an estuarine river delta. It is home to the truly bizarre animal Tullimonstrum (AKA Tully Monster) has been found, which is the state fossil of Illinois.
Mazon Creek
This lagerstätte is over 10 million years old than the famed Burgess Shale in Canada. It includes possibly over 100 species of soft-bodied animals, many of which their exact classification is still debated.
The Chengjiang biota
This lagerstätte is a 180 million-year-old German locality of Jurassic shale that has preserved a large variety of Jurassic period marine fauna. Disarticulated ichthyosaur remains are very common, such as scattered vertebrae, teeth, and other bones.
Posidonia Shale
Dating back to the Mississippian period of the Carboniferous, about 308 million years ago, _______ is a Montana lagerstätte which features an abundance of fish, aquatic arthropods, worms, microbial stromatolites, and molluscs. Chondrichthyans make up the majority of fish, and are remarkably diverse, with around 80 different genera attributed to the locale.
Bear Gulch
Many jawless fishes, primitive spiny sharks, and at least one lobe-finned fish have been recovered from this area. The site is also a wealth of invertebrate fossils, and notably, much like Beecher’s Trilobite Bed, there are many invertebrates such as brittle stars and trilobites found with extreme pyrite fossilization, giving them a look like tarnished gold.
Hunsrück Slate (Germany)
This is a Moroccan formation which dates back to the early Ordovician period, 480 million years ago. The fauna here fill a gap in the fossil record for a great many species, including some genera thought to have gone extinct at the end of the Cambrian period. Notable are the trilobites, including the Harpides, Asaphellus and Kierarges genera.
Fezouata Formation (Morocco)
Dating back to the Ordovician period of the Paleozoic era, the _________ is a wealth of trilobite fossils preserved in exquisite quality. The trilobite genera found here, such as Ceraurus, Flexicalymene, and Isotelus, even show fully fossilized appendages, the first trilobites to be discovered with preserved appendages.
Walcott-Rust Quarry
Located in Lebanon, these 100 million year old localities also show an abundance of smaller, soft-bodied marine organisms from the mid Cretaceous period. Astounding preservation has allowed animals like squid and octopodes to endure across the eons, and the preservation of genera like Keuppia and Styletoctopus paints a picture of the transition from ancestral squid-like forms to modern octopodes.
Hakel/Hjoula/Al-Nammoura
This succession of Middle Cambrian formations located in the House Range and Drum Mountains of Utah, is home to a lagerstätte of trilobites as well as a Burgess Shale-like soft-bodied fauna. Well over a 100 species of trilobites have been described from this mountain range, along with dozens of other marine critters including sponges, early echinoderms, enigmatic arthropods and even delicate jellyfish fossils.
Wheeler/Marjum/Weeks Formations
This is another konzentrat-lagerstätte which is, as the name suggests, very trilobite heavy. Charles Emerson Beecher discovered and named the location, but died unexpectedly in 1904, without passing on the exact location of the fossil bed. It was rediscovered in 1984 by Tom E. Whiteley (who also reopened the Walcott-Rust quarry for re-examination in 1990) and Dan Cooper, amateur fossil collectors.
Beecher’s Trilobite Bed (New York)
Located in the urban sprawl of Los Angeles, ________ offer a unique look into life during the Ice Age from 40,000 to 8,000 years ago. It contains possibly the richest, best preserved, and best studied assemblages of Pleistocene vertebrates, including at least 59 species of mammal, over 135 species of bird and over 600 species overall.
La Brea Tar Pits
Part of the larger Niobrara Chalk Formation, the ___________ lagerstätte dates to the Cretaceous period, over 86 million years ago. Located in Kansas, the site was, at the time, the shore of a wide but receding inland sea, and as such is home to a huge concentration of marine fossils. Reptiles like huge mosasaurs, some flighted pterosaurs, and turtles dominate the majority of faunal remains, and famously, a specimen of the monstrous fish Xiphactinus was once found here with another fish (Gillicus arcuatus) halfway down its throat!
Smoky Hill Chalk
Age of Man
Quaternary
Age of Mammals
Tertiary
Both Age of Man and Age of Mammals are under which era?
Cenozoic
