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history of life Flashcards

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Biology 101 flashcards
1
Q

What is the age of the Earth?

A

4.5 billion years

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2
Q

Modern humans first appeared how many years ago?

A

100-
150 thousand years ago.

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3
Q

Are pieces of evidence of organisms that lived in the past. They can
be actual remains like bones, teeth, shells, leaves, seeds, spores, or traces of past activities such as animal burrows, nests, and dinosaur footprints, or even the ripples created on a prehistoric shore.

A

Fossils

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4
Q

Types of Fossils

A
  • Preserved/Original Remains
  • Trace Fossils
  • Cast Fossils
  • Mold Fossils
  • Petrified Fossils
  • Carbon Film
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5
Q

Impression made in a substance = negative image of an organism

A

Mold fossils

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6
Q

Organic material is converted into stone

A

Petrified Fossils

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7
Q

Preserved wooly

A

Preserved/Original Remains

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8
Q

When a mold is filled in

A

Casts Fossils

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9
Q

Carbon impression in sedimentary rocks

A

Carbon film

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10
Q

Record the movement and behaviors of the organism

A

Trace / Ichnofossils

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11
Q

The Six Ways of Fossilization

A
  • Unaltered preservation
  • Permineralization/Petrification
  • Replacement
  • Carbonization or Coalification
  • Recrystallization
  • Authigenic preservation
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12
Q

Small organism or part trapped in amber, hardened plant sap

A

Unaltered preservatio

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13
Q

The organic contents of bone and wood are replaced with silica, calcite or pyrite, forming a rock-like fossil

A

Permineralization/Petrification

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14
Q

hard parts are dissolved and replaced by other minerals, like calcite, silica, pyrite, or iron

A

Replacement

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15
Q

The other elements are removed and only the carbon remained

A

Carbonization or Coalification

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16
Q

hard parts are converted to more stable minerals or small crystal turn into larger crystals

A

Recrystallization

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17
Q

Molds and casts are formed after most of the organism have been destroyed or dissolved

A

Authigenic preservation

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18
Q

Can help a scientist establish its position in the geologic time scale and find its relationship with the other fossils.

A

Dating the Fossils

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19
Q

2 types of fossil dating

A
  • Relative
  • Absolute
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20
Q

Does not tell the exact age: only compare fossils as older or younger, depending on their position in the rock layer.

A

Relative Dating

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21
Q

When sedimentary rock layers are deposited, younger layers are on top of older deposits

A

Law of Superposition

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22
Q

Sedimentary rock layers are deposited horizontally. If they are tilted, folded, or broken, it happened later

A

Law of Original Horizontality

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23
Q

If an igneous intrusions or a fault cuts through existing rocks, the intrusion/ fault is YOUNGER than the rock it cuts through

A

Law of Cross-Cutting Relationships

24
Q

Determines the actual age of the fossil and uses radioactive isotopes like carbon-14 and potassium-40

A

Absolute Dating

25
Q

the largest division of the geologic time scale; spans hundreds to thousands of millions of years ago (mya)

A

Eon

26
Q

division in an Era that spans time periods of tens to hundreds of millions of years

A

Era

27
Q

division of geologic history that spans no more than one hundred million years

A

Period

28
Q

the smallest division of the geologic time scale characterized by distinct organisms

A

Epoch

29
Q
  • 4.5 billion years
  • About 88% of the Earth’s history
A

Precambrian

30
Q

Earth coalesced from a cloud of dust into a planet

A

Hadean

31
Q

life first appeared on Earth.

A

Archean

32
Q

Cyanobacteria existed (w/o oxygen) and oxygenated the Earth

A

Proterozoic

33
Q

6 periods in paleozoic

A

Cambrian Explosion
Ordovician Period
Silurian Period
Devonian Period
Carboniferous Period
Permian Period

34
Q

Hard external skeletons protected trilobites, clams, snails, and sea urchins from predators.

A

Cambrian Explosion

35
Q

Plants colonized the land for the first time.

A

Ordovician Period

36
Q

This was the “Golden Age” of cephalopods and brachiopods (a clam-like shellfish).

A

Silurian Period

37
Q

are long-lived relics of the ancient family of naked-seed plants, so are conifers.

A

Ginkgos

38
Q

the naked-seed plants - developed. Gymnosperms like Glossopteris developed.

A

Devonian Period

39
Q
  • Pangaea is formed
  • Temperature were extreme, and the climates was dry
  • Plants and animals evolved adaptations to dryness such as waxy leaves or leathery skin
  • Ended with mass extinction
A

Permian Period

40
Q

Middle life, Age of Reptiles, Era of Dinosaurs

A

Mesozoic Era

41
Q

Pangaea broke into two new continents Laurasia and Gondwanaland

A

Triassic Period

42
Q
  • Golden Age for Dinosaurs
  • Earliest birds evolved from reptiles
  • Intense volcanic activity
A

Jurassic Period

43
Q

Many species and genera, including the dinosaurs, died out at end of Cretaceous

A

Cretaceous Period

44
Q

“Age of Mammals”

A

Cenozoic Era

45
Q

Reasons for mass extinction

A
  1. Extreme volcanism producing enough Co2 to cause global warming
  2. Ocean acidification
    Eruptions added
  3. Phosphorous – stimulated bacterial growth (bacteria uses oxygen, Oxygen levels drop
46
Q

fallout from a huge cloud of debris that billowed into the atmosphere when an asteroid collided with Earth

A

Iridium

47
Q

How did the first living cells appear?

A
  1. The abiotic (nonliving) synthesis of small organic molecules, such as amino acids and nitrogenous bases
  2. The joining of these small molecules into macromolecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids
  3. The packaging of these molecules intro protocells, droplets with membranes that maintained an internal chemistry different from that of their surroundings
  4. The origin of self-replicating molecules that eventually made inheritance possible
48
Q

Who proposed that Earth’s early atmosphere was a reducing (electron-adding) environment, in which organic compounds could have formed from simpler molecules.

A

Alexander Oparin & John Burdon Sanderson Haldane [1920s]

49
Q

Tested the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis

A

Stanley Miller

50
Q

areas on the seafloor where heated water and minerals gush from Earth’s interior into the ocean.

A

Hydrothermal vents:

51
Q

refers to a compartment where replication of the primitive genetic material took place and where primitive catalysts gave rise to products that accumulated locally for the benefit of the replicating cellular entity.

A

Protocell

52
Q

They are layered rocks that were formed from certain activities of certain prokaryotes.

A

Stromatolites

53
Q

A soft mineral clay produced by the weathering of volcanic ash greatly increases the rate of vesicle self-assembly

A

MONTMORILLONITE

54
Q

Protocells could undergo

A

Natural Selection

55
Q

were the main photosynthetic organism for a billion of years

A

Cyanobacteria

56
Q

The oldest known fossils

A

Cyanobacteria - 3.8 billion yrs old

BIO (5 decks)

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