Unit 1 Lesson 1

What is the fossil record?

• The list of the 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.

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

• They look for a single species going extinct.

• They look for a few of 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.

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

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

• The moon has no atmosphere to burn 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.

The mass extinction of the dinosaurs occurred 66 million years ago. This date corresponds to a thin layer in the fossil record with unusually high iridium levels. What did scientists need to do to confirm their hypotheses linking the high iridium levels to the dinosaur 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

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

• speed and mass

• mass and density

• speed and density

• speed, mass and density

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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 that large amounts of lava were erupted where India is located today. What piece of data caused scientists to believe this hypothesis was incorrect?

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

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

•  It took much longer for the 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.

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Describe two pieces of evidence that support the hypothesis that an asteroid impact was responsible for the iridium anomaly.

Another hypothesis about the mass extinction 66 million years ago involves a supernova happening near Earth. This could have produced enough iridium to explain the anomaly. However, the supernova would have also led to two other results that were unlikely. Describe one of the possible results from the supernova hypothesis that was not supported by the fossil record or the iridium layer.

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Describe two ways technology provided evidence to help confirm the location of the impact crater that produced the iridium anomaly