Unit One: Lesson One: Forces with Ancient Collisions

What is the fossil record?

• The list of all fossils that exist.

• The history of a single fossil species.

• The history of life on Earth as recorded in fossils.

• The geologic history of Earth up to the appearance of life.

How do scientists identify a mass extinction event in the fossil record?

• They look for a single species going extinct.

• They look for all the genera going extinct in a short period of time.

• They look for a lot of species going extinct over a long period of time.

• The look for large drop in the number of genera over a short period of time.

Why does the moon appear to have more impact craters than Earth?

• The moon has an atmosphere that burns up meteors before impact.

• The moon is older than the Earth so it has more impacts.

• Weathering and erosion on Earth slowly erase evidence of impacts.

• The Earth-moon system causes most meteors to change direction and hit the moon.

Mass extinction of dinosaurs was 66 million years ago. This corresponds with a thin layer of high iridium levels in the fossil record. What did scientists need to do to confirm their hypothesis linking high iridium with the extinction?

• Find how iridium affects animals similar to dinosaurs.

• Search the fossil record to find if there are other periods that show high iridium levels.

• Find possible reasons for the high iridium levels that also explain the dinosaur extinction.

• Look for similarities between the dinosaurs and other genera that went through mass extinctions.

What are the factors that affect the size of an impact crater?

• speed and mass

• mass and density

• density and speed

• speed, mass, and density

How are causation and correlation related?

• A correlation without causation is a coincidence.

• Causation is necessary for a correlation to exist.

• Causation and correlation are the same property.

• Correlation and causation are not related to each other.

The volcanism hypothesis explains that iridium came from inside Earth. It says large amounts of lava erupted where India is today. what piece of data caused scientists to believe this hypothesis incorrect?

• It was found that the lava did not come from inside Earth.

• The oceans, where most genera went extinct, were not affected by lava.

• It took much longer for lava eruptions to occur than it did for the iridium layer to form.

• The lava that erupted, which was quickly covered with soil, could not have caused the extinction.