Geologic Time & Dating

What is relative dating?

• An exact time period with dates
• When a mass extinction occurred
• An estimate of a time period or age
• The age of Dinosaurs

What era do we live in?

• Cenozoic
• Pleistocene
• Jurassic
• Holocene

What was the name of the very first supercontinent?

• Superzoic
• Rodinia
• Pangaea
• Gigantica

Carbon-14 is used to find the age of organic fossils, which means those organisms:

• Were once living
• Became fossilized in the ocean
• Died in the desert
• Came into contact with radiation

During which era was much of the Earth covered in swamps and forests?

• Cretaceous
• Carboniferous
• Triassic
• Precambrian

The "daughter isotope" in a rock sample refers to the radioactive particles.

• True
• False

This is used to divide Earth's long history into manageable parts:

• Invertebrates
• Portioning
• Law of Horizontality
• Geologic Time Scale

Which of the following is an "event" that a scientist might use to mark the start or end of an era?

• Evolution
• Extinctions
• Index fossils
• All fossils in a single rock sample

A massive volcanic eruption could have cause the extinction of the dinosaurs because:

• It covered the planet in lava
• It caused a chain reaction of volcanic eruptions
• Ash blocked all the light from the sun
• A volcanic eruption isn't an extinction theory

In order of largest to smallest, Geologic time is broken down in the following way:

• Periods - Eras - Eons
• Eons - Eras - Periods
• Eras - Periods - Eons
• Just Eons to Periods