Midterm Flashcards
What is paleontology, and what fields does it incorporate?
the study of the remains of ancient life, including body, chemical, and trace fossils
- involves biology, chemistry, physics, geology
- not archaeology-they study the remains of human civilization
What is a dinosaur? Give two different definitions
- dinosaurs were terrestrial diapsids that lived in the Mesozoic
- better definition: all the descendents of the common ancestor of the pigeon and Triceratops
How has the view of dinosaurs changed in the last 200 years or so?
- bones often thought to be monsters and often influenced artwork and mythology
- thought were giant lizards at first
- very primitive knowledge-but some developments made, factored into evidence for evolution, evolution helped get info about dinos
- then dinosaur craze hit the US in the early 1900s-2 competing museums on east coast-many dino species identified-Both found the large collections of bones in the American West-Both did much to promote dinosaur research in the late 1800’s
- the view of dinos shaped by way portrayed in media-in 20th century-esp 40s,50s, 60s-like the Flinstones
- portrayed dinos as slow, sluggish, largely inactive-but still violent
- looked like giant lizards
- things change in the late 60s and into the 70s-mostly due to John Ostrom
- dinos ancestors of birds-dinos somewhat birdlike
- child care and behavior of dinos similar to modern birds
- dino endothermy (dino warm-bloodedness)
- moving away from lumbering, lazy view of dinos
- feathered dinos
- why went extinct
- many new species named
What is science and why is it important? How does science get done?
- science is a process for finding things out in the natural world
- scientific method we’re familiar with-come up w question, background research, hypothesis, experiment, etc., start it again if disproved
- but this method isn’t a great way of thinking about it-too simplified-better scientific method involves a lot of things
- Science is self-correcting and progressive
- build on research of others
- an open debate of theories weeds out the weaker ones until a strong consensus is reached
- results must be repeatable
- scientists police the quality of research through peer review in journals-research that does not use quality data and methods is not published
- important cuz 2/3 americans don’t understand what science is, how it is conducted, and what one can expect from it-widespread belief in pseudoscience-other nations are advancing in science so it’s bad if we’re not-belief in evolution not as high as other rich countries-people in Congress denying climate change
What are the different ways of doing science?
- Inductive and Deductive
- -all scientists do a little of both, and there is a constant feedback between observation and experiment
inductive reasoning/science
- Observational
- Hypotheses made to explain a group of observations
- The search for ‘regularities’ in ‘Deep Time’
- Further observations are made to confirm or deny that hypothesis
- “Present is the key to the past”
- e.g. astronomy, paleontology, geology
deductive reasoning/science
- Experimental (and epidemiological)
- Test is designed to confirm/deny a hypothesis
- Further tests can be done
- e.g. chemistry, psychology, medicine
What are the steps in the practice of paleontology?
- Exploration
- Funding & permitting
- Collection & Transport
- Preparation & Replication
- Measurement & Data Collection
- Research & Publication
empirical evidence
Empirical – phenomena independent of perceptions and pre-conceived notions
Mean =
average
Standard Deviation =
a measure of variation
Paleontological Research: exploration-How do we know where to look?
- Geologic Maps
- Previous work-other people who have collected there, clues they look for to find fossils
- Preliminary Exploration-decide good spots to come back to
- Artistry-everyone has their superstitions and methods-some based on science, some on superstition
Why do we do most of our work in deserts?
- preservation-very little erosion there
- not a lot of trees or grass-easy to see sediment-would need to get through lots of grass and soil and vegetation if tried to find fossils in a forest or field
- less geologic activity (in some places)
Paleontological Research: funding and permitting-Funding Expeditions
- Federal Agencies
- National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Private Foundations
- National Geographic
- Professional Societies
- Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP)
- Geological Society of America (GSA)
- Corporations
- Petroleum Industry
- Universities
Paleontological Research: funding and permitting-Where does that money go?
-Overhead (if prof gets a big grant, university takes a big chunk of it-pays for staff, maintenance, research assistants, etc-goes straight back to school-creates jobs-puts money back into the economy through paying people’s salaries)
-Salaries
-Students
-Equipment
-Travel
The money doesn’t go in a hole!!
Paleontological Research: funding and permitting-permitting
- US Federal Lands require a permit
- Bureau of Land Management
- US Forest Service
- National Park Service
- Fish and Wildlife Service
- if find something on public land, can’t keep it-work on it, study it-but fossils must go to museum when done so other people can study them-this is called an Accession agreement
- Private land requires permission from the owner-fossils don’t necessarily need to go to a museum/institution-if you own private land, the fossils in it are yours
- Foreign expeditions will have varying rules and regulations-many foreign countries won’t let you take the fossils out of the country-they want them in a museum there
What does the story of Sue and what does it illustrate?
-Largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found
-Discovered by workers from the Black Hills Institute (a private organization) on the Cheyenne
River Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1990
-Found on “private” land
-The owner was part of the Sioux tribe
-But the land was a trust held by the US DOI
-so there was a fight about who owned it
-FBI seized the fossil in 1992, and a legal bamble ensued over its ownership
-Courts found in favor of the land owner, who put it up for auction
-The Field Museum in Chicago bought it, with help from Disney and McDonald’s for $7.6 million dollars-museums don’t like to buy fossils, don’t have a lot of money, don’t like to set precedent for buying fossils-would rather just get from public land-that’s the way it should be
-illustrates that dino fossils and information should be more the general public but that this gets complicated when fossils on private land
Paleontological Research: Collecting and Transport
- Prospecting: lots of walking around, looking at the ground
- Surface-collection: oftentimes can just pick up fossils right off the ground-this is called surface collection
- Quarrying: dig to particular area-not as common as you might think
- Plastering:if find something particularly big, can plaster it
- Screen-washing: take a bunch of sediment, and dig it up, tear up sediment in water-falls apart easily there-put sediment in screen boxes, then hopefully fossil comes out of it once water washes sediment out
- Identification
- Cataloguing
Paleontological Research: Preparation & Replication
- Preservative
- Matrix removal
- Physical
- Chemical
- Assembly
- Molding
- Casting
Paleontological Research: Research
- Museum work
- Measurement & Comparison
- New technologies
- GIS (Geographic Information Systems)
- CT Scanning
- Computer Modeling-build 3D models of bones, then put flesh on to see how mass and everything distributed on dinosaurs
What are the 3 different rock types and how are they made?
igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic
- igneous: lava that solidifies
- sedimentary: pieces of other rocks join together, deposited by water, air, or glaciers
- metamorphic: starts with protolith (unaltered rock), then changes occur under pressure and temperature
igneous rock
- solidified molten rocks
- intrusive (plutonic-solidify under earth’s crust) vs. Extrusive (magmatic-solidify in air)
- many crystals of various sizes inside of them-one of the big determinants of how big crystals are is how long rock takes to solidify-longer it takes, bigger the crystals are
sedimentary rock
-made up of eroded “clasts” (pieces of rocks) from other rocks
-deposited by water, air (aeolian), glaciers
-classified mainly on grain size
Conglomerate/breccia→ sandstone → mudstone/shale
(coarser————————————-> finer)
-chemical sediments-evaporates, get salt
-biogenic sedimentary rocks-limestones-things made up of chemicals that are deposited by living things-things like calcium carbonate, used to make shells
metamorphic rock
-solid state changes in texture of other rocks
-starts with protolith (unaltered rock)
-changes occur under pressure and temperature
-examples:
limestone → marble
shale → slate/schist/gneiss
-as heated up, changes in form/type of rock
-eventually it melts