Exam 5: Rocks Fossils and Time Making Sense of the Geologic Record

A clast of granite found in a breccia is dated at 450 million years old. What can you conclude about the breccia?

____________________ form when ____________________ are filled with minerals and sediment.

When minerals replace the bodily remains during fossilization, we say the fossil has been ____.

In a marine transgression, sediments within a sedimentary facies are deposited at the same time.

Walther's Law states that facies in a conformable vertical sequence will also occur in a lateral sequence.

What is one way for an unconformity to develop?

Time units are rock units that were deposited during a certain time interval.

What process is used to demonstrate that two rock strata are equivalent?

The three types of unconformities are ____________________, ____________________, and ____________________.

____________________ is largely responsible for developing the principle of fossil succession (also called the principle of faunal succession).

An unconformity in which stratified sedimentary rocks overlie an erosional surface cut into igneous or metamorphic rocks is called a(n)____.

Lithostratigraphic correlations are made on the basis of similarity of rock type over wide areas.

You observe two shale beds separated by 300 kilometers. The rocks in the two shale beds are similar, but one bed is several million years older than the other. You can conclude both beds ____.

Discuss Walther's law and its application to determine marine transgressions and regressions.

In a sequence of undisturbed sedimentary rocks, the oldest fossils will be ____.

Formations consist of rocks that are all the same age.

A break or gap in the geologic record resulting from erosion or nondeposition or both is a(n) ____.

The Devonian system refers to the rocks deposited during the time of the Devonian period.

Guide fossils are most useful because they ____.

According to the principle of ____________________, fossil assemblages succeed one another through time in a regular and determinable order.