Earths Processes

Question 1

Describe the Urey and Miller experiment

Answer 1

Stimulated lightening strikes with sparks to create amino acids

Question 2

How does the Urey miller experiment relate to origin of life

Answer 2

Showed that simple organic molecules could be made from inorganic compounds

Question 3

Black smokers

Answer 3

Water seeps into heat from deep earth emitting black cloud

Question 4

Cyanobacteria

Answer 4

Photosynthetic bacteria that creates oxygen as a by product

Question 5

Stromatolites

Answer 5

Dome structure build from Cyanobacteria sediemnt

Question 6

Super cycle steps

Answer 6

1. Single continent
2. Extension and sagging
   3.rifting began
3. Continents disperse
   5.subduction at a maximum
   6.slow subduction and rifting, continents converge

Question 7

Super cycle time scale

Answer 7

400 to 600 million years

Question 8

Superposition

Answer 8

A principle that younger rocks lie above older rocks

Question 9

Absolute dating

Answer 9

Technique used to determine the actual age of a fossil with radioactivity

Question 10

Cambrian fauna

Answer 10

Cambrian explosion occured where life became hard bodied

Question 11

Mass extinction events

Answer 11

Cretaceous
Permian

Question 12

Panspermia

Answer 12

Theory that life is originated in space

Question 13

Ediacaran fauna

Answer 13

Organisms that lied in shallow marine environment, soft bodied animals

Question 14

Impact of Cyanobacteria on biosphere

Answer 14

Aerobic respiration

Question 15

Impact of Cyanobacteria on geosphere

Answer 15

Red beds formed on land, minerals that decomposed in oxygen became rare

Question 16

Impact of Cyanobacteria on atmosphere

Answer 16

Formation of ozone layer

Question 17

Impact of Cyanobacteria on hydrosphere

Answer 17

Decrease CO2, O2 build up in oceans

Question 18

Great oxidation event

Answer 18

Moment when earth became the first known planet to contain substantial amount of oxygen

Question 19

BIFS

Answer 19

Banded iron formations
Alternating laters of iron oxides that provide evidence for lac of oxygen on early earth

Question 20

Mold formations

Answer 20

The imprint that organisms made leaving impression of their body

Question 21

Cast formations

Answer 21

Sediment that fills mold formations

Question 22

Trace fossils

Answer 22

Trails or imprint from an organism activity

Question 23

Index fossils

Answer 23

Fossils that are distinctive or easily recognisable

Question 24

Amino acids

Answer 24

Chemical building block of proteins that can be created in UME

Question 25

Plate tectonics

Answer 25

The theory that earths surface is divided into plates that move and interact

Question 26

Lithosphere

Answer 26

Outer layer of the earth

Question 27

Asthenosphere

Answer 27

Semi-fluid layer beneath the lithosphere that allows tectonic plates to move

Question 28

Mantle convection

Answer 28

The movement of heat and material in the mantle that drives plate tectonics

Question 29

Subduction zone

Answer 29

Regions where one tectonic plates sinks beneath another, often forming deep ocean trenches and volcanoes

Question 30

Rifting

Answer 30

The process where tectonic plates pull apart, creating new crust

Question 31

Orogeny

Answer 31

The process of mountain formation due to the collusion and compression of tectonic plates

Question 32

Relative dating

Answer 32

Determining the age of rocks or fossils by comparing them with sourrounding layers

Question 33

Piperock formations