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Definition
| Scientific theory that the lithosphere is cracked and composed of pieces that interact with each other as they float on a hot, deformable asthenosphere |
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| is the idea that the Earth's continents have moved their present positions after fragmentation of a larger landmass in the geologic past |
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| The hypthesis that ocean basins expand by addition of new rock from spreading centers and that older rock from is destroyed near the basin margins. |
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| A relatively depressed area of the crust that recieves sedimentary deposition. |
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| Solid, outer part of the Earth underlying the continents and continental shelves, composed largely of granitic rocks |
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| Solid, outer part of the Earth underlying the ocean basins, consisting largely of basaltic rocks |
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| 1915, a german meteorologist, marshaled evidence that during the late Paleozoic, the continents were joined into a single landmass |
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| Late Paleozoic to early Mesozoic supercontinent comprising most of the world's continental crust |
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| Alfred Wegner noticed four things |
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Definition
1. Jigsaw Fit
2. Matching rock tyoes
3. watching fossils
4. paleoclamtic |
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| like match between the eastern coastline of South America and the western coastline of Africa |
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| of continental areas of Gondwanaland (S. America and Africa) |
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| markings left by the Carboniferous-Permian glacial tills in Gondwanan areas |
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| Similiarities in the ancient freshwater-dependent organisms |
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| Glossopteris (a plant) and Mesosaurus (a carnivorous reptile), both extinct occur widely across Gondwana |
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| A junction of three spreading edges of plates |
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| Elongate basin formed through downdropping of a fault block, and bounded on both sides by a normal fault |
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| How many plates are there? |
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Definition
| There are 7 large plates (carrying the continents and much of the pacific ocean) and about 20 smaller plates |
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| How often does plate motion occur per year? What can it cause? |
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Definition
| typically 1-7 cm per year, causes plates to converge, diverge, or slide past one another, and this movement is the source of many Earthquakes. Also, many volcanoes line up along or close to plate boundaries. |
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Definition
| Volcanic center, often in the interior of a plate, caused by a plume of magma rising from the mantle |
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| Each tectonic plate consists of rigid lithosphere (comprising the crust and uppermost part of the mantle) overlying a weak, partly molten region of the upper mantle |
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| flow within the asthenosphere follows patternsof enormous __________, and it is this convection that causes the overlying plates to move. |
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| Outer, relatively rigid layer of the Earth, comprising the crust plus the upper part of the mantle |
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| Layer within the upper mantle and below the litosphere where rocks are relatively ductile and easliy deformed |
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| occur where plates slide, or perhaps more accurately, grind past each other along transform faults |
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| occur where two plates slide apart from each other. Mid-ocean ridges and active zones of rifting are examples |
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| (or active margins) occur where two plates slide towards each other commonly forming either a subduction zone (if one plate moves underneath the other) or a continental collision (if the two plates contain continental crust) |
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| The trailing edge og a tectonic plate, where active tectonic interaction with another plates is not occuring |
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| An example is the Great Rift Valley and it is a failed continental rift that has filled with sediment |
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Definition
| long, narrow belt, usually including a deep-sea trench, along which subduction occurs |
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| Convergent plate boundary |
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Definition
| Boundary between two plates that are moving toward each other |
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Definition
| a slab of cool, dense oceanic crust comes in contact with the margin fo another plate, and it descends beneath that plate, eventually reaching depths where melting occurs under elevated temperature and pressure conditions. The rock will be remelted into magma and recycled. |
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Definition
| Acurate line of active volcanoes and igneous plutons associated with a convergent plate margin where subduction is occuring |
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| Boundary between two crustal blocks characterized by a transform fault, and where crust is neither created nor destroyed. |
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| offset crustal blocks at the mid-ocean ridges, an example is the San Andreas Fault, which extends from Mexico to California |
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| The process of building mountain chains and consequently deforming granitic crust (continental type crust) |
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| Chains of mountains form in three principal tectonic settings: |
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Definition
1. where continental collision occurs
2. in volcanic arcs adjacent to subduction zones
3. along mid-ocean rifts |
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| in this case has produced a mountain chain that extends down the middle of an assembled continent |
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| An assemblage of ultramafic and mafic igneous rocks representing oceanic crust |
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Term
| Orogenesis in a volcanic arc setting |
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Definition
| like the japanese islands, or the Andes of South America, does not involve continential collision. Instead, as remelted magma rises toward the surface from a nearby deep ocean trench, isostatic adjustment (related to the addition of relatively low density rock to the crust) and solidification of new rock causes crustal thickening. At the surface volcanic peaks are formed. |
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Definition
| A linear sedimentary basin that subsides in repsonse to thrust loading of the crust |
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| Wedge-shaped deposit of sediments shed from an active thrust belt and filling a foreland basin |
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| or the time of the Archean Eon plus the Proterozoic Eon, was a time in which many crucial events in Earth's physical, chemical, and biological evolution took place |
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Definition
| Initial formation of the Earth, solidification of the crust, development of the cratons (cores of the continents), initiation of plate tectonic activity, formation of the oceans and atmosphere, the first prokaryotic and eukaryotic life, and early icehouse-greenhouse cycles including glacial episodes. The rock record is fossil poor. |
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| The unit of geologic time beginning with Earth's formation, perhaps 4.56 billion years ago, and ending at the beginning of the Proterozoic Eon, 2.5 Billion years ago |
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| The unit of geologic time beginning 2500 million years ago (2.5 billion years ago) and ending at the beginning of the Phanerozoic Eon, 542 million years ago. |
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| The core of a continent- the part of the Earth's continental crust that has attained relative stability and received little deformation for atleast 1 billion years |
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| are rock that have fallen to Earth (or someother planet or moon) from space. They are relatively small rocks that fall to a planetary surface from interplanetary space |
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| Rocks brought back from the lunar surface by US astronauts during Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s are silicate rocks of basaltic (mafic) and ultramafic compostion. They are comparable in compostion to ________ (most oridinary chondrites) and to Earth's Mantle. |
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| of stony meteorites and moon rocks using uranium-lead, uranium-thorium, potassium-argon, and rubidium-strontium dating methods provide ages that cluster between 4.5 and 4.6 billion years |
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Definition
| a formation of the universe, initially all matter is assumed to have been concentrated at a single point. Upon explosion, matter shot out in all directions. Eventually graviational attraction caused its assembly into galaxies, which are disk-shaped clusters of stars |
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| is thought to be 15 to 18 billion years old based on calculations of the wavelengths of light and radiating from distant stars. |
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| the boundary between the crust and the mantle |
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| must have formed after the Earth has coalesced and was large enough to retain gases in its graviational field. While in the molten state, volatiles easliy escaped to the surface in a process called outgassing |
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Definition
| The process of releasing gases, including water vapor from magma |
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| Sources of water for Earth's early ocean |
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| Earth's outgassing vapors condensed to form liquid water of the ocean. Comets and volcanoes also release salt-free water and the source of the ocean's salt comes from the chemical weathering of rocks, particularly on land and at the shoreline |
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| are almalgamated from large podlike rock bodies welded along metamorphic zones called greenstone belts. The podlike bodies are mostly high-grade metaigneous rocks representing the felsic crust of Archean protocontinents, and the greenstones connecting them are metavolcanicand metasedimentary rocks rich in chlorite, a green mineral fourmed under low-grade metamorphic conditions |
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| Elongate area within an Archean Shield containing metamorphosed and deformed volcanic and sedimentary rocks, and characterized by abundant chlorite-rich greenstone |
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| Interval of Earth history during which amalgamation of the continental crust occurred |
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| The oldest block of contintental crust |
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Definition
| is in the Acasta Formation, part of the Slave Craton, which is now part of northern Canada (3.8 to 4.0 billion years old) |
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| sedimentary rocks composed of thin chert (quartz) bands interlayed with iron oxide minerals |
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| An example of Banded iron formation is |
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Definition
| from the Itsaq gneiss complex-Isua greenstone belt of Southwest Greenland, was deposited 3.7 to 3.8 billion years ago |
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| blue-green eubacteria, most of which are photosynthetic |
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| The process by which plants, algae, and some bacteria create organic molecules from cardon dioxide and water using energy from the sun |
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| "self-feeding" by means of either harvesting light energy from the sun or from oxidation of inorganic compounds to make organic molecules |
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| A means by obtaining nutrients by ingesting or breaking down organic matter |
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| A thinly layered biogenic-sedimentary structure resulting from the trapping and binding of fine sediment in layers by photosynthetic cyanobacteria |
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| composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, are the chemical building blocks of life. |
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Term
| photochemical dissociation |
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Definition
| the splitting of molecules into their components by means of energy from sunlight or other light sources |
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| Opening in the Earth's Crust, usually associated with magmatic activity, where hot water, often enriched in ions, is released |
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| Organisms belonging to the domain |
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Definition
| including the methanogenic, halophillic, and thermoacidophillic prokaryotes |
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Definition
| knew Earth was round; determined circumference of the Earth |
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Definition
| had sun, moon, planets revolve around the earth; he believed in geocentic |
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| believed that everything revolved around the sun (heliocentric) |
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| retrograde motion; track mars throughout a year and believed everything was heliocentric |
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Definition
1. Law of Elliptical orbits
2. Law of equal areas DA/T=K
3. Law of equal periods t^2=d^3
d=distance from planet to sun
t=period of a plant (earth years) |
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| Designed teloscopes to look out at stars; 1.sunspots 2.other plants have moons; 3. postion of stars: showed moon revolves around Earth and Earth revolves around the sun; discovered that geocentric is not true |
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| Red shift: moving away from the Earth |
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| E=MC^2; strong nuclear force; electromagneism: waves that come out of starts; determined gravity |
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Definition
| about 2.5 billions years ago the Earth entered a new phase of history, which is why this was choosen as the beginning of _______________. |
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| The part of the continent covered by flat-lying or gently tilited, mostly sedimentary strata |
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| Interval of Earth History, beginning with the Proterozoic Eon, characterized by relatively stable, alagamated continenal cores |
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| An early supercontinent, assembled in the mesoproterozoic and seperated in the neoproterozoic |
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| A linear or acurate region subjected to folding and other deformation during a mountain building cycle. Also known as an orogen |
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Definition
| an acurate orogenic region that developed 1.3-1.0 billion years ago and that affected an extensive are of present day North America and adajacent regions |
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| A tectonically driven cycle defined by the assembly of a supercontinent and later fragmentation and dispersal of its pieces; it beings with the collision and welding of tectonic plates to form an enormous mass of continental crust. It ends with the breakup and dispersal of fragments of the supercontinent. There were at least two supercontinent cycles witness in the proterozoic eon |
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| A hypothesized late neoproterozoic supercontinent |
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| The paleozoic to mid-mesozoic landmass that included south america, the falkland islands, africa, madagascar, india, austrailia, and antarctica |
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Definition
| which contain, well-oxidized, iron-bearing sediments, show a clear relationship to atmospheric oxygenation |
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| Cryogenian and Ediacaran periods |
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Definition
| are assoicated with banded iron formations and capped by carbonate rocks. During these periods global glaciation occured |
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| Snowball Earth Hypothesis |
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| the concept that during the proterozoic eon the entire surface of the Earth was repeatedly plunged into freezing conditions |
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Definition
| witnessed some of the most pivotal changes in history of life on Earth including: Chemosynthesis, photosynthesis, and heterotrophy |
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| eventually led to evolution of an oxygenated atmosphere-ocean system |
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| gained and importance as the probable means by which the eukaryotic cells initially evolved (through the symbiotic association of predator and undigested prey) |
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Definition
| Typically range up to 10 micrometers in diameter and do not have a true nucleus |
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Definition
| are larger than prokaryotes and have a true nucleus |
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Definition
| condtition in which two or more dissimilar organisms can live together |
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| Eukaryotic Cells evolution |
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Definition
| all eukaryotic cells contain mitochondria, (extractor of energy from food). Mitochoondrial percursors could have been independent prokaryotic organisms captured by other cells but resistant to digestion inside the predator cells. |
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| until this period most organisms were microscopic. That changed about 570 million years ago with the appearance of a remarkable collection of Neoproterozic organisms that mark an important step toward the multicellular eukaryotic-dominated world of the phanerozioc; it gets its name from a conspicuous assortment of fossils having flattened zipper-like, concentric, frondlike, radial, and other miscellaneous shapes; found in Ediacara Hills of south australia |
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| Fossils dating from the edicaran period including the earliest putative animals |
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| layer of microscopic bacteria and fungi growing at the sediment surface |
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