- Chapter 1: Materials, Processes, and Principles:
1. What is the principle of "uniformitarianism" and how is it used by geologists to reconstruct the Earth's history? Is "uniformitarianism" best thought of as a fact, an assumption, or a theory? Explain. How do "uniformitarianism" and religious views of Earth history relate to one another?
2. The text compares the Phanerozoic Eon to a single year, giving the approximate times during the year when some major events would've taken place. Make a comparison of your own between all of geologic time and some length of time or distance that's meaningful to you (e.g. time for a football game, distance from your dorm to the DC, etc.) - include in your comparison the approximate "locations" of all the major boundaries between Eons and Eras in the geologic record.
3. The processes that shape the Earth's surface are largely driven by two different heat sources - one external (the sun), and one internal (heat produced by radioactive decay of elements in Earth's interior and heat left over from the Earth's formation). Discuss the processes driven by these heat sources and the way(s) in which those processes are related to the formation of rocks.
- Chapter 2: Rock-Forming Minerals and Rocks:
1. What are the atomic number and atomic weight of each of the atoms described below. Explain briefly. Find a periodic table of the elements and determine which element each of these atoms would represent, then write down the appropriate chemical symbol to denote each of these isotopes (e.g. 14C).
- an atom whose nucleus contains 8 protons and 10 neutrons
- an atom whose nucleus contains 14 protons and 14 neutrons
- an atom whose nucleus contains 18 protons and 22 neutrons
- an atom whose nucleus contains 92 protons and 146 neutrons
2. Name the three different kinds of rocks recognized by geologists and describe the events that would be necessary to form a rock of each type. Name one specific rock of each of the three types (a total of three different rocks), and briefly describe some of the details of its composition and/or formation.
- Chapter 3: The Diversity of Life:
1. Are modern humans prokaryotes or eukaryotes - and what does that mean? Use Figures 3-6, 3-7 and 3-23 to construct a cladogram that shows the evolutionary path of modern humans and includes the following groups of organisms (not in the correct order): therapsids, hominids, reptiles, ancestral single-celled protozoans, primates, ancestral prokaryotes, mammals, amphibians, ancestral chordates, fishes. For each transition in the cladogram, briefly describe the adaptation that probably led to the development of the new group.
2. Name the six different kingdoms of living things recognized by biologists, and briefly explain how the members of each kingdom differ from those of the other kingdoms.
3. Choose any one of the following animal phyla and use the textbook and the internet to write up a paragraph or two describing the phylum and one or two examples of fossil animals that belong to the phylum (include feeding styles, preferred habitat, etc.): molluscs, arthropods (e.g. trilobites), cnidaria (e.g. corals).
- Chapter 4: Ecology:
1. Choose any one of the following terrestrial environments and use the textbook and the internet to write a couple of paragraphs describing the characteristics of that environment, some specific examples of places where the environment is found on today's Earth, and an outline of a possible food web involving at least four different kinds of organisms that actually live in that environment: tropical rain forest, savannah, temperate forest, arctic tundra.
2. Distinguish between the following pairs of descriptors for marine "lifestyles" and "feeding styles":
- pelagic vs. benthic
- planktonic vs. nektonic
- suspension feeding vs. deposit feeding
- herbivore vs. carnivore
- predator vs. scavenger
- Chapter 5: Sedimentary Environments:
1. We've looked at three different sedimentary environments in class (listed below). For each one, describe the environment, identify the typical sequence of sedimentary rocks that would be associated with that environment, and explain how that sequence would be developed over time:
- shallow tropical sea (transgression, regression)
- delta
- meandering river
- Chapter 6: Correlation and Dating of the Rock Record:
1. Lithologic correlation involves matching the rocks found in areas that are in the same region. Does the same rock unit necessarily correspond to the same interval of geologic time in all locations where it's found? Give some examples to support your answer.
2. Biostratigraphic correlation involves matching the fossils found in rocks of different areas, possibly very far apart. Does the first or last occurrence of a particular fossil necessarily correspond to the same moment of geologic time at all locations? Explain.
3. Suppose that isotope X decays to isotope Y with a half-life of 5 million years. A sample is found that contains 700 atoms of Y and only 100 atoms of X. How old is the sample? What assumptions have you made in arriving at your answer?
- Chapter 7: Evolution and the Fossil Record:
1. Discuss three different lines of evidence that support the idea that species can evolve and/or that evolution of species has taken place in the past. Do you find the evidence conivincing? Why or why not?
2. What is the mechanism by which evolution takes place, as recognized by Charles Darwin? Explain how that mechanism works, and make up an example or two (something different from either the text or class examples) that predict the effects of that mechanism on some group of organisms during a time of changing climatic conditions (e.g. climates cooling off as Earth enters an "ice age").
- Chapters 8-9: Plate Tectonics and Mountains:
1. The Earth's lithospheric plates can interact by (1) pulling away from one another, (2) colliding with one another, or (3) sliding past one another. Describe the different kinds of geological activity associated with each of those types of interactions and explain why those types of activity occur.
2. How does paleomagnetism help geologists determine the position of continents in the past?
3. Describe the typical structure of a mountain belt, including an explanation of each of the following features: fore-arc basin (melange), metamorphic belt, igneous arc, fold-and-thrust belt, foreland basin (flysch, molasses),
- Chapter 11: The Archean Eon of Precambrian Time:
1. Describe the formation of the Earth and its moon as a part of the overall process of the formation of our solar system. About how long ago did the solar system form, and how do we know?
2. Discuss the development of continental crust during the Archean, and describe the changes in the volume and arrangment of continental crust that likely characterized the Archean. How do "greenstone belts" fit into this story?
3. Discuss the development of life during the Archean: How might life have arisen on Earth, and what evidence do we have for life during the Archean?
- Chapter 12: The Proterozoic Eon of Precambrian Time:
1. Describe the assembly of North America (Laurentia) during the Proterozoic. What kinds of evidence have been used to put together the story you've outlined? How does the Wopmay orogen, discussed at the start of Chapter 12, fit into this story?
2. What were the "snowball Earth" episodes of the Neoproterozoic, and what evidence do we have to support their occurrence? What effects might those episodes have had on life of the lastest Proterozoic?
- Chapter 13: The Early Paleozoic World:
1. What was the "Cambrian Explosion", and why has that "event" been chosen to divide the Precambrian from the Phanerozoic? What conditions likely led to the "Cambrian Explosion" and why has no similar diversification of animal phyla occurred since?
2. In class we've looked at the orogenies that created the Appalachians of eastern North America, and that resulted in the formation of Pangaea by the late Paleozoic. Looking back over those episodes, discuss three different "clues" that geologists might look for as evidence of the former presence of a major mountain range in an area.
- Chapter 14: The Middle Paleozoic World:
1. Discuss the movement of life onto land, for both animals and plants. Which groups were the first to successfully colonize the land, and what development allowed more fully terrestrial habitats to be colonized by mid-late Paleozoic times?
- Chapter 15: The Late Paleozoic World:
1. Discuss the terminal Permian extinction (the PT extinction), touching on the scale of the event, the kinds of organisms that were most affected, and the factors that may have been responsible for this extinction.
- Chapter 16: The Early Mesozoic Era:
1. Discuss the life of the oceans during the early Mesozoic, focusing on the invertebrate and vertebrate animals that became important during that time. How did the organisms that thrived then compare with those of the late Paleozoic or of the modern seas?
2. Choose any three of the following dinosaur genera and use the internet to find out something about their size, appearance, lifestyle, and time of greatest abundance: Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Maiasaura, Corythosaurus. Write up a paragraph about each dinosaur and be sure to indicate whether it was an Ornithischian or Saurischian!
- Chapter 17: The Cretaceous World:
1. What event marks the end of the Cretaceous (and the end of the Mesozoic) and what is the probable cause of that event? Discuss the evidence geologists have accumulated to support that "most likely" explanation. Do you think that explanation deserves to be called a theory at this point? Explain briefly.
- Chapter 19: The Neogene World:
1. What groups of organisms underwent significant adaptive radiations during the Neogene? Discuss the climatic and biological factors that likely led to those radiations.
2. What evidence do geologists have for a series of glacial-interglacial cylces during the Quaternary and what's the likely cause of those cycles? Explain.
3. Imagine that all 4,500 million years of Earth history were compressed into a single month of 30 days. When during that month would the following events have occurred (show your calculations): earliest life (stromatolites), first sizeable continents, O2 present continually in the atmosphere, snowball Earth events, Cambrian explosion, P-T extinction, K-T extinction, appearance of the earliest members of the genus Homo.
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