Rock Dating Jeopardy
Fossils
100-What are remains or traces of a plant or animal preserved in the rock record called?
fossils
200- Mold is a hollow depression in a rock in the shape of a fossil, what is the name of
the rock that forms by seeping into the mold?
The cast
300- What type of fossil is an insect preserved in amber?
Original remain
400- What type of a fossil are animal tracks?
Trace fossil
500- What is the name of a thin carbon film that resembles a silhouette of an organism?
Carbonaceous film
Relative Dating
100- What is relative dating?
Placing events in the sequence that they occurred.
200- Which is older an igneous intrusion or the rock it cuts across?
The rock it cuts across
300- What does the law of superposition state?
The oldest rock layer will be at the bottom and the oldest at the top in an
undisturbed sequence.
400- Which is older the rock layer, or the embedded fragments found in the rock layer?
The embedded fragments
500- What does it mean if there is an unconformity in a rock layer?
Erosion has worn away the layers of sediment
Absolute Dating
100- What is absolute time?
Actual dates that something occurred
200- How many years does one tree ring represent?
One
300- What is the difference between a parent and daughter isotope?
Parent isotope is the original isotope and the daughter isotope is what it becomes
when it decays
400- What is a varve?
Sediment deposited on a yearly cycle
500- If I want to determine that age of a piece of petrified wood from around 10,000
years ago, what type of radiometric dating would I use?
Carbon dating
Geologic Time Scale
100- What is the largest division of the geologic time scale?
Eon
200- The Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic are all examples of what division?
era
300- Put the following divisions in order from largest to smallest division. Era, epoch,
period, and eon.
Eon, era, period, epoch
400- What era are we currently in?
Cenozoic era
500- What is the name of the first Eon?
Archaen
Potpourri
100- When an element is unstable and gives off particle it is called a:
Radioactive isotope
200- What did the little paper discs in the half-life lab represent?
Parent and daughter isotopes
300- What is half-life?
Amount of time it takes for half of an element to decay
400- What are the 2 types of unconformities we discussed in class?
Nonconformity and disconformity
500- Why can’t I use Uranium-lead dating on a sample that is only 50,000 years old?
Uranium has such a large half-life, ~4.5 billion years