The Mesozoic Earth

Question 1

What is weathering? What is the difference between chemical and mechanical weathering?

Question 2

What are three major chemical weathering processes? How do simple solution and hydrolysis differ?

Question 3

What is the relationship between a mineral’s stability to chemical weathering and the order in which it
crystallises? Which minerals are most and least stable?

Question 4

What is the relationship between climate and weathering rates? How do rates of erosion vary with latitude?

Question 5

Where do the residual products of weathering end up?

Question 6

What are the general trends in the climate and sea level through the Mesozoic? What are the names of the major Mesozoic continental masses and oceans and the approximate ages of their formation and break up?

Question 7

Have all Large Igneous Province LIP eruptions resulted in mass extinctions? What controls their impact/severity on biota?

Question 8

How do LIPs cause mass extinctions? How does increased levels of CO2 affect environmental feedback
relationships?

Question 9

What is the name of the volcanic units that were erupted at the time of the Permo/Triassic mass extinction event?

Question 10

What were the climatic conditions at the start of the Triassic? What is the evidence in the rock record of the
severity of the climatic conditions?

Question 11

What is the name of the intensely humid interval within the Triassic (Carnian)? What was its cause?
How long did Pangaea last?

Question 12

When and in what order did Pangaea breakup? When did ocean floor spreading begin in the Central Atlantic? What land masses were created?

Question 13

What was the name of the ocean between the two halves of Pangaea that existed during the Jurassic and
Cretaceous? What was the Tethyan trench and where was it located?

Question 14

What was the cause of the end-Triassic mass extinction event?

Question 15

What does OAE refer to, and what deposits are characteristic of these times? What is the relationship between OAE and LIPs?

Question 16

How did Pangaea effect global climate in the Late Triassic/Early Jurassic?

Question 17

How did the break up of Pangaea affect the Cretaceous climate and sea levels?

Question 18

What type of sedimentary rock is typical of the Cretaceous?

Question 19

What is chalk? What is the depositional setting of chalk? Why can there be no chalk deposits that are older than Triassic in age? When did calcareous nannoplankton first appear?

Question 20

What is chert? What is the difference between primary and secondary chert? What is the depositional setting of primary chert? What organism would not have been a constituent of the chert layers that are associated with Banded Iron Formations?

Question 21

What is the Calcite Compensation Depth and how does it control the deposition of chalk and chert?

Question 22

What two events have been invoked as the principal cause of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event (make sure you know their names and locations)? What is the evidence for each?