1. 1.3 Strange Rocks

2. PALEONTOLOGY - the study of the history of life as
reflected in the fossil record

3. Invertebrate Paleontology
Micropaleontology
Paleobotany

4. Taphonomy
Evolutionary
Biology
Paleobiology/Paleoecology
Biostratigraphy

5. FOSSIL - remains or traces of organisms that lived in the
Geologic past and are preserved in the crust of the Earth.
It’s not easy to become a fossil!
Very few individual organisms are preserved out of the billions that have lived throughout geologic time!!
Usually, its just the hard parts of organisms that are preserved.

6. What organism left fossil behind?
It’s called an ammonite – a cephalopod related to modern-day squid
It is at least 65 million years old.

7. Living Relatives of Ammonites
Evolution of Cephalopods

8. What organism left these fossils behind?
How did it become embedded in the sedimentary rock that is also solid?
What was deposited first, the object or the strata below the object? Explain!
These are sharks teeth

9. Five phases of fossilization:
Death
Deposition
Preservation
Uplift/Exposure
Erosion

10. Types of Preservation 1) Preservation of Unaltered Remains
Amber Entombment
Tar Impregnation
Original Skeletal Material
Refrigeration
Mummification

11. 2) Preservation of Altered Remains
Mineralization
Trace
Fossils
(Ichnology)
Mold and Cast
Carbonization

12. What Do Fossils Tell Us? Mass Community Structure Evolutionary
Relationships
Mass
Extinctions
Biodiversity through Time
Modern
Paleozoic

13. Paleogeography
Paleoclimatology

14. Rank the rock layers from oldest to youngest.
Identify the unconformity.

15. versus Law of Superposition
RELATIVE DATING: Determining which rock layers and fossils are older and which are younger (i.e. determining which era/period/epoch a fossil or layer belongs to).
Law of Superposition
Low of Original Horizontality
Law of Lateral Continuity
Law of Cross-Cutting Relationships
versus
Radiometric Dating
ABSOLUTE DATING: Determining age (in years) of a rock layer or fossil

16. Determining which fossil species appeared in what order in time.
Relative Dating Techniques
- Fossil Succession
Determining which fossil species appeared in what order in time.

17. Index fossils should be: common easily recognizable
Relative Dating Techniques - Correlation
Index Fossils: fossils that can help determine the relative ages of rocks and correlate rock sequences from different locations.
Index fossils should be:
common
easily recognizable
occurred over a large area
relatively short time

18. William Smith
( )

20. The Grand Record

21. Forces of Catastrophe