Exam 1: An Introduction to Geology and Plate Tectonics

Wegener's supercontinent that began to break up about 200 million years ago was named ________.

The northern extension of North America's great Paleozoic Appalachian mountain belt is now found in ________.

The oceanic crust is made of mafic rock called ________ and is about ________ thick on average.

The two layers inside the Earth which contain significant amounts of molten material are ________.

Ocean waves are directly created by ________.

Why are the youngest mountains formed either in the circum Pacific belt or the Alps-Himalayas belt?

A conservative plate boundary where two plates slide laterally in opposite directions is a ________ boundary.

The doctrine of uniformitarianism implies that Earth's geologic history took place over a relatively short time span.

Igneous rocks are produced largely by the deposition and consolidation of surface materials like sand and mud.

Cooling away from the ridge causes the oceanic lithosphere to strengthen and thicken.

Shallowest to deepest, the primary compositional layers within the Earth are ________.

Use complete sentences, correct spelling, and the information presented in Chapter 1 to answer the question(s)below. -Catastrophism obviously influenced seventeenth and eighteenth century thought by implying that Earth only needed to be a few thousand years old to explain landscapes and geologic features.However, catastrophic and often sudden changes are at least a part of the rock record that geologist's attempt to interpret.List three geologic catastrophes that would most likely affect landscapes or features on Earth and explain how they get recorded in rocks.

The ________ is thought to be the only molten, metallic portion in the Earth's interior.

According to Wegener, where was southern Africa located during the Late Paleozoic?

________ rocks always originate at the surface of the Earth.

In geologic theory, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, landslides, floods, and tsunamis are all ________.

In addition to the dominant iron and nickle, the core is thought to contain ________.

The ________ is the weak zone in the mantle below the lithosphere.

The idea that all of the tremendous geologic changes in Earth's history were concentrated in a few brief millennia is termed ________.

Which one of the following statements is not correct?