Geology 112: Some Thoughts for the Final Exam




The final will consist of roughly 50% new material (namely the Cenozoic Era).
I will also include a couple of questions which will be of similar nature and scope to those on previous
exams (this is a hint to study your old exams and make sure you can answer all of the questions on them!).
There will also be a couple of longer “essay style” question in which I will want you to synthesize some of
the information on the larger themes in the course, namely plate tectonics and mountain building, sea
level change, evolution of organisms, extinction events.
Be sure you can write out the entire geologic time scale (all EONS, ERAS, PERIODS; and EPOCHS for the
Cenozoic) as well as the age (in millions of years) for each boundary.
Cenozoic Mountain Building
Conclusion of Cordilleran orogeny (compressive tectonics)
Late Cenozoic (Miocene -- Present) fragmentation of Cordilleran belt:
Basin and Range block faulting
Columbia River plateau basalts
San Andreas strike-slip faulting
Relationships between these provinces
Regional uplift and canyon cutting in western craton
Late Cenozoic events outside Pacific region:
Alpine-Himalayan belt -- continental collisions
Craton rifting (East Africa; Antarctica; etc.)
Drying up of the Tethys Sea (Miocene crisis in Mediterranean)
Coastal Plain -- continental shelf sedimentation and tectonics
Appalachian rejuvenation by warping
Life of the Cenozoic
Rise of mammals -- ecological replacement of extinct reptiles
Human Evolution
Dispersal and extinctions of land mammals and plants
Cenozoic Climate and Glaciation
Effects of glaciation (Isostasy, lakes, floods, wind deposits, sea level)
Pleistocene chronology
Evidence of overall late Cenozoic cooling
Possible causes of glaciation-plate tectonics and Milankovich Cycles
Oxygen isotopic record
Probability of unusual combination effects, Astronomical factors
Earth’s Heat Budget (albedo, transparency of atmosphere, etc.)
Pleistocene Life: land bridges and animal/plant distribution
Channeled Scablands: erosional and depositional features and their distribution
Mass extinctions in the paleontological record
Review the major extinction events in earth history
Holocene extinctions-climate change or over hunting?
Importance of understanding of time scales, evolutionary change, overall
ecologic interactions of living and non-living (Lessons from Earth History)