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THE HISTORY OF GEOLOGY

By :
Linda Apriana Paskah
270110140148
F

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING GEOLOGY


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PADJADJARAN UNIVERSITY
JATINANGOR
2015

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Table of Contents
Cover Paper ............................................................................................................ 01
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ 02
CHAPTER I - Introduction
1.1

Time ..................................................................................... 05

1.2

The Geologic Record ................................................................ 06

1.3

Basic Principles of Geology ............................................................................... 11

1.4

Unconformities ............................................................... 13

CHAPTER II - Geologic Time


2.1

The Age of The Earth ........................................................................................ 16

2.2

Radiometric Dating ............................................................................. 20

2.3

Geologic Time Scale ................................................................................... 23

2.4

Catatrophism and Uniformitarianism ................................................................ 27

CHAPTER III - Paleontology


3.1

Fossils .................................................................................... 30

3.2

Invertebrate Fossils ....................................................................... 32

3.3

The Preservation of Fossils ........................................................................ 40

3.4

Fossils and The Evolution ............................................................................. 45

3.5

The Extinction of Dinosaurs ............................................................................. 49

3.6

KT-Boundary ............................................................................ 55

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CHAPTER IV - Plate Tectonics and Geosyncline


4.1

The Geosynclinal Theory ......................................................... 58

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4.2

Plate Tectonic Theory ............................................................................ 59

4.3

Tectonic Plate Movement ................................................ 62

4.4

Mid Oceanic Ridge ....................................................................... 65

4.5

Earthquake Zones ...................................................... 68

4.6

The Correlation Between Basin and Plate Tectonics .............................................. 71

CHAPTER V - The Origin of The Earth


5.1

The Origin of The Universe .................................................................................. 77

5.2

Solar System Planets ........................................................... 79

5.3

The Composition of The Earths Crust ............................................................... 83

5.4

Geosyncline ..................................................................................... 85

5.5

Tectonic Plates .......................................................... 86

5.6

Plume Theory ..................................................................................... 88

5.7

Big-Bang Theory ..................................................................................... 89

CHAPTER VI - Precambrian
6.1

Common Information ........................................................................................ 92

6.2

The Classification of Precambrian .............................................................. 93

6.3

The Precambrian Records and The Evidence ...................................................... 96

CHAPTER VII - Paleozoic


7.1

Cambrian............................................................... 99

7.2

Ordovician.............................................................. 104

7.3

Silurian .......................................................... 106

7.4

Devonian ............................................................ 108

7.5

Carboniferous ......................................................... 109

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Permian ....................................................................... 111

7.6

CHAPTER VIII - Mesozoic

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8.1

Triassic .............................................................................. 113

8.2

Jurassic ................................................................... 115

8.3

Cretaceous ........................................................................... 116

CHAPTER IX - Cenozoic (The Tertiary Period)


9.1

Definition........................................................ 119

9.2

The Classification of Cenozoic .................................................. 120

9.3

Tectonics and Climatic Conditions ................................ 123

9.4

Biotic Evolution ................................................................ 125

9.5

Human Evolution .............................................................. 127

CHAPTER X - Cenozoic (The Quaternary Period)


10.1

All About The Cenozoic and The Human Evolution ............................................ 128

References ................................................................................................................... 136

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CHAPTER I
Introduction
1.1 Time
Geology is the study of the Earth, its composition, its history, and it is constantly
changing character. Geologists study the origin and evolution of our planet; the chemical
and physical properties of minerals, rocks, and fluids; the structure of our mobile crust - its
newly forming ocean floors and its ancient drifting continents; the history of life; and the
human adaptation to earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and floods. Geology has its history.
And the history has its time in every periods of life. Time is one of many things thats
important to be studied in geology.
Time is a measure that events can be ordered from the past through the present into the
future. Time is also a measure of durations of events and the intervals between them.
Commonly, time is referred to as the fourth dimension, along with the three spatial
dimensions. The concept of time depends on the spatial reference frame of the observer,
and the human perception as well as the measurement by instruments such as clocks are
different for observers in relative motion. The past is the set of events that can send light
signals to the observer, the future is the set of events to which the observer can send light
signals. Einstein, John Archibald Wheeler, and Woody Allen say that time is what separates
cause and effect. Some simple definitions of time such as "time is what clocks measure",
which is a problematically vague and self-referential definition that utilizes the device used
to measure the subject as the definition of the subject, and "time is what keeps everything
from happening at once", which is without substantive meaning in the absence of the
definition of simultaneity in the context of the limitations of human sensation, observation
of events, and the perception of such events.
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Time has been studied as a major subject of study in philosophy, religion, and science

such as geology. But every subject has its meaning about time depends on their kinds of
view. The use of time in geology is important to learn the history of geology, sequence

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stratigraphy, paleontology, sedimentology, petrography, and the other subjects that is


studied in geology. Without time, we dont know how long the earth was existed and what
events that have happened during every periods of earths life.
1.2 The Geologic Record
Your life can be divided into major stages, like childhood, adult years, and later years.
And each of those stages can be divided into divisions, like infancy, teenage years, middle
years, and so forth. Geologists have done something similar with the history of the Earth.
They've created the geologic record.
The geologic record is a standard time scale that partitions the Earth's history into four
eons and their subdivisions of eras, periods, and epochs. The geologic record in
stratigraphy, paleontology and other natural sciences refers to the entirety of the layers of
rock strata, deposits laid down by volcanism or by deposition of sediment derived from
weathering detritus (clays, sands, etc) including all its fossil content and the information it
yields about the history of the Earth such as its past climate, geography, geology and the
evolution of life on its surface. According to the law of superposition, sedimentary and
volcanic rock layers are deposited on top of each other. They harden over time to become a
solidified (competent) rock column, that may be intruded by igneous rocks and disrupted by
tectonic events.
Scientists have divided Earth's history into a series of time segments that are
collectively referred to as the geologic time scale. Each of these units is defined based on
geologic record and fossil record, with divisions between the units marking some major
change such as the appearance of a new class of living creatures or a mass extinction.
Geologic time phases become shorter as we move forward from Earth's formation toward
the present day because records grow increasingly rich. Newer rocks and fossils are better
preserved than ancient deposits, so more information is available to categorize recent
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phases in detail and pinpoint when they began and ended.

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In other side, the geologic record has a meaning as the history of Earth as recorded in

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the rocks that make up its crust. Rocks have been forming and wearing away since Earth
first started to form, creating sediment that accumulates in layers of rock called strata. The
way these strata are arranged and the fossils they contain give scientists clues about what
Earth was like millions and billions of years ago.
The concept of what is called geologic time is somewhat difficult to fully grasp
because it deals in such enormous blocks of time. When people first began to seriously
study Earth around the seventeenth century, their first estimate of Earth's age was in the
thousands of years. One famous example is that of the Irish clergyman James Ussher
(1581-1656), who used the Bible to calculate that Earth was created in 4004 B.C. A century
later, estimates by others had raised that number to only about 75,000 years, and it was not
until the Scottish geologist (a person specializing in the study of Earth) James Hutton
(1726-1797) made his famous statement that Earth contains "no vestige of a beginning--no
prospect of an end," did the notion of millions and perhaps billions of years begin to be
considered. Today, with advanced tools, scientists are able to say with some certainty that
Earth is about 4,600,000,000 years old.
By examining the progress of geology, humans touch upon the major breakthroughs
that allow scientists to be able to "read" Earth's geologic record. This geologic history of
the planet's evolution (changes occurring over time) and developmental changes is recorded
in its rocks. One of the earliest breakthroughs was the eighteenth-century realization that
there was something to be learned by the obvious relationships of one type of rock to
another. Called the law of superposition, this idea states that, in an undisturbed section of
sedimentary rocks (formed in layers or "strata" by weathering and erosion), each layer is
older than the one above it and younger than the one below it. Although this seems fairly
simple and obvious today, it was a major breakthrough in being able to start to date the age
of Earth.
A related idea that also proved very helpful was the principle of faunal succession.
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This states that the fossils found in rocks also succeed one another in a definite order, and
that a time period can be recognized by the type of fossils contained in its rocks. This
principle applies throughout the world, so that geologists can identify rocks of the same age

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even if they are found in widely separated locations. The importance of fossils cannot be
overemphasized, since without them, science would lose its primary tool for subdividing
geologic time periods into smaller and smaller sections.

Eras, Periods, and Epochs


Geologists have divided the geologic record into intervals that can be organized or

charted onto a timescale. The major divisions of geologic time are known as eras which are
described by some as "chapters" in Earth's history. Each era is naturally different from
another, especially in terms of the nature of life it contained. The eras are then divided into
periods. These have nothing to do with the passage of a certain amount of time, meaning
that they are not of equal length. Instead, they are based upon the nature of the rocks and
fossils found there. Some may be longer than others. The main subdivisions of periods are
called epochs. These eras, periods, and epochs usually were named after places on Earth
(mostly in Western Europe) where the rocks of those times were first discovered.
In terms of the geologic record, life on Earth is first seen about 3,500,000,000 years ago.
This means that for about 1,000,000,000 years from the time Earth first formed, there was
no life on the planet. The oldest primitive fossils found were simple prokaryotic organisms
(bacteria whose cells did not have a nucleus or any other structures). The first eukaryotic
organisms (whose cells contain a nucleus that is surrounded by a membrane) appeared
about 1,800,000,000 years ago in what is called Precambrian era.
The first multicellular organisms did not appear on Earth until somewhere between
700,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 years ago. Then, during the Cambrian period of the
Paleozoic era, an explosion of multicellular life in the sea took place. Continuing
explosions occurred, going from marine invertebrates (animals without a backbone) to the
beginnings of fishes. Around 435,000,000 years ago, the first land plants evolved, followed
by great swamp trees, amphibians, and primitive reptiles. The dinosaurs came on the scene
during the Triassic period (about 225,000,000 years ago), and by about 180,000,000 years
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ago, the Jurassic period saw the first birds and mammals. Sometime during the Paleocene
epoch of the Cenozoic era (about 65,000,000 years ago), the Age of Mammals began.
Around 2,000,000 years ago, Homo habilis appeared and was the first human species to be

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given the genus name Homo, meaning "man."


Finally, because of the geologic record, scientists also know that a major phenomenon
like continental drift (the movement of the plates on Earth's crust) is responsible for the
current position of the continents. Scientists also know that the record contains evidence of
several extinctions. None of these are more dramatic and puzzling than the disappearance
of the dinosaurs about 100,000,000 years ago during the Cretaceous period. Scientists have
described the geologic record as a history book to be read to learn about Earth's past.
However, the geologic record is only useful if one knows how to read its signs and interpret
them.
a)

Correlating The Rock Record


Geologists and other earth scientists often refer to the rock record. The rock record is

nothing more than the rocks that currently exist. The rock record does not show a tidy,
orderly progression of geologic events. Rock formations are eroded, buried, torn apart,
melted, squashed together, even turned upside down. The only parts of the Earth
history "recorded" are "leftovers" that haven't yet been recycled. When an area undergoes
change due to a geologic process, the original rocks are often changed or destroyed, making
the investigation of the events that created the rock quite difficult. Nevertheless, every thing
we know about the history of the Earth has been learned from studying the rock formed by
geologic processes. Most of Earth's history is very sketchily recorded, and the rock record
for most of Earth's history is composed of rocks that have been changed physically and
chemically many times since it was first laid down. The appearance of fossils in the rock
record has made geologic investigation easier, because the organisms that the fossils came
from give us markers in the rock record. Fossils also tell us many things about the
environment present when the organisms were alive.
b)

Discordant Strata Example


The study of layered rocks and the fossils they contain is called biostratigraphy and

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utilizes amassed geobiology and paleobiological knowledge. Fossils can be used to


recognize rock layers of the same or different geologic ages, thereby coordinating locally
occurring geologic stages to the overall geologic timeline.

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The fossils of monocellular algae in the USGS figure were taken with a scanning
electron microscope and have been magnified 250 times. In the U.S. state of South Carolina
three marker species of fossil algae are found in a core of rock whereas in Virginia only two
of the three species are found in the Eocene Series of rock layers spanning three stages and
the geologic ages from 37.255.8 Ma.
Comparing the record about the discordance in the record to the full rock column
shows the non-occurrence of the missing species and that portion of the local rock record,
from the early part of the middle Eocene is missing there. This is one form of discordancy
and the means geologists use to compensate for local variations in the rock record. With the
two remaining marker species it is possible to correlate rock layers of the same age (early
Eocene and latter part of the middle Eocene) in both South Carolina and Virginia, and
thereby "calibrate" the local rock column into its proper place in the overall geologic
record.
c)

Lithology vs Paleontology

It became useful to subdivide the overall geologic record into a series of component subsections representing different sized groups of layers within known geologic time, from the
shortest time span stage to the largest thickest strata eonothem and time spans eon, as the
picture of the overall rock record emerged, and discontinuities and similarities in one place
were cross-correlated to those in others. Concurrent work in other natural science fields
required a time continuum be defined, and earth scientists decided to coordinate the system
of rock layers and their identification criteria with that of the geologic time scale. This
gives the pairing between the physical layers of the left column and the time units of the
center column in the table at right.
1.3 Basic Principles of Geology
If we talk about geologists, we also talk about the major subject that geologists
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studied. It is geology. Geology is the science which investigates the successive changes that
have taken place in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature; it enquires into the
causes of these changes, and the influence which they have exerted in modifying the

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surface and external structure of our planet.


By these researches into the state of the earth and its inhabitants at former periods, we
acquire a more perfect knowledge of its presentcondition, and more comprehensive views
concerning the laws now governing its animate and inanimate productions. When we study
history, we obtain a more profound insight into human nature, by instituting a comparison
between the present and former states of society. As the present condition of nations is the
result of many antecedent changes, some extremely remote and others recent, some
gradual, others sudden and violent, so the state of the natural world is the result of a long
succession of events, and if we would enlarge our experience of the present economy of
nature, we must investigate the effects of her operations in former epochs.
We often discover with surprise, on looking back into the chronicles of nations, how
the fortune of some battle has influenced the fate of millions of our contemporaries, when it
has long been forgotten by the mass of the population. With this remote event we may find
inseparably connected the geographical boundaries of a great state, the language now
spoken by the inhabitants, their peculiar manners, laws, and religious opinions. But far
more astonishing and unexpected are the connexions brought to light, when we carry back
our researches into the history of nature. The form of a coast, the configuration of the
interior of a country, the existence and extent of lakes, valleys, and mountains, can often be
traced to the former prevalence of earthquakes and volcanoes, in regions which have long
been undisturbed. To these remote convulsions the present fertility of some districts, the
sterile character of others, the elevation of land above the sea, the climate, and various
peculiarities, may be distinctly referred. To select another example, we find in certain
localities subterranean deposits of coal, consisting of vegetable matter, formerly drifted into
seas and lakes. These seas and lakes have since been filled up, the lands whereon the forests
grew have disappeared or changed their form, the rivers and currents which floated the
vegetable masses can no longer be traced, and the plants belonged to species which for ages
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have passed away from the surface of our planet.


Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical sciences, as is history to the
moral. An historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics,

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politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word, with all branches of
knowledge, whereby any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual
nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geologist should be well
versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy,
botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature With these
accomplishments the historian and geologist would rarely fail to draw correct and
philosophical conclusions from the various monuments transmitted to them of former
occurrences. They would know to what combination of causes analogous effects were
referrible, and they would often be enabled to supply by inference, information concerning
many events unrecorded in the defective archives of former ages.
It was long ere the distinct nature and legitimate objects of geology were fully
recognized, and it was at first confounded with many other branches of inquiry, just as the
limits of history, poetry, and mythology were ill-defined in the infancy of civilization.
Werner appears to have regarded geology as little other than a subordinate department of
mineralogy, and Desmarest included it under the head of Physical Geography. But the
identification of its objects with those of Cosmogony has been the most common and
serious source of confusion. The first who endeavoured to draw a clear line of demarcation
between these distinct departments, was Hutton, who declared that geology was in no ways
concerned "with questions as to the origin of things." But his doctrine on this head was
vehemently opposed at first, and although it has gradually gained ground, and will
ultimately prevail, it is yet far from being established. We shall attempt in the sequel of this
work to demonstrate that geology differs as widely from cosmogony, as speculations
concerning the creation of man differ from history. But before we enter more at large on
this controverted question, we shall endeavour to trace the progress of opinion on this topic,
from the earliest ages, to the commencement of the present century.
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1.4 Unconformities
An unconformity is the contact between sedimentary rocks that are significantly
different in age, or between sedimentary rocks and older, eroded igneous or metamorphic

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rocks. Unconformities represent gaps in the geologic record; periods of time that are not
represented by any rocks. Unconformities have a correlation with stratal discontinuity
which stratal discontinuity has a meaning as states that layers of sediment initially extend
laterally in all directions; in other words, they are laterally continuous. As a result, rocks
that are otherwise similar, but are now separated by a valley or other erosional feature, can
be assumed to be originally continuous. Statal continuity explains about the layers of
sediment that extend laterally, whereas unconformities explain about the contact between
the layers of sediment vertically.
Unconformities happen for two reasons: sediment deposition stopped for a
considerable time and/or existing rocks were eroded prior to being covered by younger
sediment. There is no single time span represented by an unconformity. It depends on how
long erosion occurred or for how long deposition ceased.
Some unconformities are easier to identify than others. For example, the contact
between a very old granite and a younger sandstone is pretty obvious. On the other hand,
figuring out whether two limestone beds are significantly different in age might require
more investigation
There are four types of unconformities. The types are :
a) Angular Unconformities
Angular unconformities are those where an older package of sediments has been tilted,
truncated by erosion, and than a younger package of sediments was deposited on this
erosion surface. The sequence of events is summarized in the pictures at left. First:
subsidence and sediment deposition occurs. Second: rocks are uplifted and tilted
(deformation). Third: erosion removes the uplifted mountain range. Fourth: subsidence
occurs, the sea covers the land surface, and new sediments deposition occurs on top the
previous land surface. Then the cycle may repeat.
b)

Disconformities

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Disconformities are also an erosion surface between two packages of sediment, but the
lower package of sediments was not tilted prior to deposition of the upper sediment
package. The sequence of events is as follows. First: subsidence and sediment deposition.

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Second: uplift and erosion. Third: renewed subsidence and deposition. Because the beds
below and above the disconformity are parallel, disconformities are more difficult to
recognize in the sedimentary record. In the diagram at left, the disconformity is indicated
by an irregular black line between the 3rd and 4th rock unit from the bottom.
c)

Paraconformities

A paraconformity is a type of unconformity in which strata are parallel; there is no apparent


erosion and the unconformity surface resembles a simple bedding plane. It is also called
nondepositional unconformity or pseudoconformity.
d)

Nonconformities

Nonconformities are unconformities that separate igneous or metamorphic rocks from


overlying sedimentary rocks. They usually indicate that a long period of erosion occurred
prior to deposition of the sediments (several km of erosion necessary).

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CHAPTER II
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Geologic Time
2.1 The Age of The Earth
The age of the Earth is 4.54 0.05 billion years (4.54 109 years 1%). This dating is
based on evidence from radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with
the radiometric ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples. In other side,
scientists think that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. Coincidentally, this is the same age
as the rest of the planets in the Solar System, as well as the Sun. Of course, its not a
coincidence; the Sun and the planets all formed together from a diffuse cloud of hydrogen
billions of years ago.
In the early Solar System, all of the planets formed in the solar nebula; the remnants
left over from the formation of the Sun. Small particles of dust collected together into larger
and larger objects pebbles, rocks, boulders, etc until there were many planetoids in the
Solar System. These planetoids collided together and eventually enough came together to
become Earth-sized.
At some point in the early history of Earth, a planetoid the size of Mars crashed into
our planet. The resulting collision sent debris into orbit that eventually became the Moon.
Its actually difficult to tell how scientists know Earth is 4.54 billion years old from the
surface of the planet alone, since plate tectonics constantly reshape its surface. Older parts
of the surface slide under newer plates to be recycled in the Earths core. The oldest rocks
ever found on Earth are 4.0 4.2 billion years old.
Scientists assume that all the material in the Solar System formed at the same time.
Various chemicals, and specifically radioactive isotopes were formed together. Since they
decay in a very known rate, these isotopes can be measured to determine how long the
elements have existed. And by studying different meteorites from different locations in the
Solar System, scientists know that the different planets all formed at the same time.
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Failed Methods for Calculating the Age of the Earth


Our current, accurate method of measuring the age of the Earth comes at the end of a
long series of estimates made through history. Clever scientists discovered features about

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the Earth and the Sun that change over time, and then calculated how old the planet Earth is
from that. Unfortunately, they were all flawed for various reasons.
a) Declining Sea Levels Benoit de Maillet, a French anthropologist who lived from
1656-1738 and guessed (incorrectly) that fossils at high elevations meant Earth was
once covered by a large ocean. This ocean had taken 2 billion years to evaporate to
current sea levels. Scientists abandoned this when they realized that sea levels
naturally rise and fall.
b) Cooling of the Earth William Thompson, later known as Lord Kelvin, assumed
that the Earth was once a molten ball of rock with the same temperature of the Sun,
and then has been cooling ever since. Based on these assumptions, Thompson
calculated that the Earth took somewhere between 20 and 400 million years to cool
to its current temperature. Of course, Thompson made several inaccurate
assumptions, about the temperature of the Sun (its really 15 million degrees Kelvin
at its core), the temperature of the Earth (with its molten core) and how the Sun is
made of hydrogen and the Earth is made of rock and metal.
c) Cooling of the Sun In 1856, the German physicist Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand
von Helmholtz attempted to calculate the age of the Earth by the cooling of the Sun.
He calculated that the Sun would have taken 22 million years to condense down to
its current diameter and temperature from a diffuse cloud of gas and dust. Although
this was inaccurate, Helmholtz correctly identified that the source of the Suns heat
was driven by gravitational contraction.
d) Rock Erosion In his book, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
Charles Darwin proposed that the erosion of chalk deposits might allow for a
calculation of the minimum age of the planet. Darwin estimated that a chalk
formation in the Weald region of England might have taken 300 million years to
weather to its current form.
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e) Orbit of the Moon George Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin, guessed that the
Moon might have been formed out of the Earth, and drifted out to its current
location. The fission theory proposed that the Earths rapid rotation caused a chunk

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of the planet to spin off into space. Darwin calculated that it had taken the Moon at
least 56 million years to reach its current distance from Earth. We now know the
Moon was probably formed when a Mars-sized object smashed into the Earth
billions of years ago.
f) Salinity of the Ocean In 1715, the famous astronomer Edmund Halley proposed
that the salinity of the oceans could be used to estimate the age of the planet. Halley
observed that oceans and lakes fed by streams were constantly receiving more salt,
which then stuck around as the water evaporated. Over time, the water would be
come saltier and saltier, allowing an estimate of how long this process has been
going on. Various geologists used this method to guess that the Earth was between
80 and 150 million years old. This method was flawed because scientists didnt
realize that geologic processes are extracting salt out of the water as well.
So far scientists have not found a way to determine the exact age of the Earth directly
from Earth rocks because Earth's oldest rocks have been recycled and destroyed by the
process of plate tectonics. If there are any of Earth's primordial rocks left in their original
state, they have not yet been found. Nevertheless, scientists have been able to determine the
probable age of the Solar System and to calculate an age for the Earth by assuming that the
Earth and the rest of the solid bodies in the Solar System formed at the same time and are,
therefore, of the same age.
The ages of Earth and Moon rocks and of meteorites are measured by the decay of
long-lived radioactive isotopes of elements that occur naturally in rocks and minerals and
that decay with half lives of 700 million to more than 100 billion years to stable isotopes of
other elements. These dating techniques, which are firmly grounded in physics and are
known collectively as radiometric dating, are used to measure the last time that the rock
being dated was either melted or disturbed sufficiently to rehomogenize its radioactive
elements.
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Ancient rocks exceeding 3.5 billion years in age are found on all of Earth's continents.

The oldest rocks on Earth found so far are the Acasta Gneisses in northwestern Canada near
Great Slave Lake (4.03 Ga) and the Isua Supracrustal rocks in West Greenland (3.7 to 3.8

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Ga), but well-studied rocks nearly as old are also found in the Minnesota River Valley and
northern Michigan (3.5-3.7 billion years), in Swaziland (3.4-3.5 billion years), and in
Western Australia (3.4-3.6 billion years).
These ancient rocks have been dated by a number of
radiometric dating methods and the consistency of the results
give scientists confidence that the ages are correct to within a
few percent. An interesting feature of these ancient rocks is
that they are not from any sort of "primordial crust" but are
lava flows and sediments deposited in shallow water, an
indication that Earth history began well before these rocks
Click on the image to see
a graphical representation
of

geologic

[344K]

time

were deposited. In Western Australia, single zircon crystals


found in younger sedimentary rocks have radiometric ages of
as much as 4.3 billion years, making these tiny crystals the
oldest materials to be found on Earth so far. The source rocks
for these zircon crystals have not yet been found. The ages

measured for Earth's oldest rocks and oldest crystals show that the Earth is at least 4.3
billion years in age but do not reveal the exact age of Earth's formation. The best age for the
Earth (4.54 Ga) is based on old, presumed single-stage leads coupled with the Pb ratios in
troilite from iron meteorites, specifically the Canyon Diablo meteorite.
In addition, mineral grains (zircon) with U-Pb ages of 4.4 Ga have recently been
reported from sedimentary rocks in west-central Australia. The Moon is a more primitive
planet than Earth because it has not been disturbed by plate tectonics; thus, some of its
more ancient rocks are more plentiful. Only a small number of rocks were returned to Earth
by the six Apollo and three Luna missions. These rocks vary greatly in age, a reflection of
their different ages of formation and their subsequent histories. The oldest dated moon
rocks, however, have ages between 4.4 and 4.5 billion years and provide a minimum age
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for the formation of our nearest planetary neighbor. Thousands of meteorites, which are
fragments of asteroids that fall to Earth, have been recovered. These primitive objects
provide the best ages for the time of formation of the Solar System. There are more than 70

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meteorites, of different types, whose ages have been measured using radiometric dating
techniques.
The results show that the meteorites, and therefore the Solar System, formed between
4.53 and 4.58 billion years ago. The best age for the Earth comes not from dating individual
rocks but by considering the Earth and meteorites as part of the same evolving system in
which the isotopic composition of lead, specifically the ratio of lead-207 to lead-206
changes over time owing to the decay of radioactive uranium-235 and uranium-238,
respectively. Scientists have used this approach to determine the time required for the
isotopes in the Earth's oldest lead ores, of which there are only a few, to evolve from its
primordial composition, as measured in uranium-free phases of iron meteorites, to its
compositions at the time these lead ores separated from their mantle reservoirs. These
calculations result in an age for the Earth and meteorites, and hence the Solar System, of
4.54 billion years with an uncertainty of less than 1 percent. To be precise, this age
represents the last time that lead isotopes were homogeneous througout the inner Solar
System and the time that lead and uranium was incorporated into the solid bodies of the
Solar System. The age of 4.54 billion years found for the Solar System and Earth is
consistent with current calculations of 11 to 13 billion years for the age of the Milky Way
Galaxy (based on the stage of evolution of globular cluster stars) and the age of 10 to 15
billion years for the age of the Universe (based on the recession of distant galaxies).
2.2 Radiometric Dating
Radiometric dating is used to estimate the age of rocks and other objects based on the
fixed decay rate of radioactive isotopes. Learn about half-life and how it is used in different
dating methods, such as uranium-lead dating and radiocarbon dating, in this video lesson.
Radiometric dating provides science with a powerful tool for reconstructing our
planets history. The idea that radioactivity could be used as a measure of the age of
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geologic formations was first suggested in 1905 by a British physicist, Lord Rutherford. In
1907 Professor B. B. Boltwood, a radiochemist at Yale University, made the first attempt to
establish a geologic time scale. The invention of the mass spectrometer after World War I

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led to the discovery of isotopes (see below) and the calculation of accurate decay rates. Not
until the 1950s, however, was precise dating achieved and accepted by the scientific
community. The methodologies and instruments for radiometric dating have been expanded
and fine-tuned in the half-century since, and very accurate dating is now possible.
Atoms are composed of a nucleus orbited by negatively charged electrons. The nucleus
is made up of protons, particles with a positive charge, and neutrons, particles with no
charge. Every atom of a given element has the same number of protons in the nucleus. Each
element may have one or more isotopes. Different isotopes of a given element have the
same number of protons but a different number of neutrons.
Radioactive elements are unstable atoms that give off particles. Emitting these particles
transforms the unstable atoms into different, more stable elements. This is called
radioactive decay, and it occurs at a constant rate specific to each isotope of each element.
The original radioactive material is called the parent; the stable product is called the
daughter. The rate of decay is described by the half-life of the isotopethe average time an
atom of a radioactive element remains in the parent state. When the half-life has elapsed,
half the parent element will have decayed into the daughter element.
Potassium-40, for example, decays into Argon-40 with a half-life of 1.25 billion years,
so that after 1.25 billion years half of the Potassium-40 in a rock will have become Argon40. This means that if a rock sample contained equal amounts of Potassium-40 and Argon40, it would be 1.25 billion years old. If the sample contained three atoms of Potassium-40
for every one atom of Argon-40, it would be 625 million years old. And if it contained one
atom of Potassium-40 for every three atoms of Argon-40 it would be 1.875 billion years
old.
Most radioactive isotopes decay too rapidly to be useful in determining age on a
geologic scale. Carbon-14 dating is probably one of the best-known dating methods, but the
half-life of Carbon-14 is approximately 5730 years, plus or minus 40 years. That makes the
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half-life far too short for dating material that is millions of years old. A few isotopes,
however, do decay extremely slowly and can be used as geologic clocks. These isotopes
are:

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PARENT ISOTOPE

HALF-LIFE

STABLE DAUGHTER

Uranium-235

704 Million Years

Lead-207

Potassium-40

1.25 Billion Years

Argon-40

Uranium-238

4.5 Billion Years

Lead-206

Thorium-232

14.0 Billion Years

Lead-208

Lutetium-176

35.9 Billion Years

Hafnium-176

Rubidium-87

48.8 Billion Years

Strontium-87

Samarium-147

106 Billion Years

Neodymium-143

Depending on the kind of rock studied, radiometric data can give different kinds of
information. Igneous rock is formed from cooling magma or lava, and it contains small
amounts of radioactive elements. By determining the ratio of the parent material to the
daughter material in the igneous rock, its possible to calculate the rocks age. As igneous
rock erodes, the eroded particles are deposited to become sedimentary rock. Dating
sedimentary rock by using radiometric techniques will tell the age of the original igneous
rock, not the time since the sedimentary rock formed. (Although sometimes the two ages
are very similar, for example when a volcanic explosion deposits ash on a surface and that
ash is quickly incorporated into sediments. The age of the ash and the age of the
sedimentary rock would then be very similar.) Metamorphic rock, by contrast, is formed
from earlier rock through intense heat and pressure. Metamorphism can reset some
radiometric clocks (Potassium-Argon is particularly susceptible), so that radiometric dates
record the time of alteration rather than the date when the earlier rock first solidified from
magma or was deposited as sediment. Other parent-daughter pairs are less susceptible to
alteration.
The oldest dated rocks on Earth come from northern Canada and are about 4 billion
years old. Rocks older than 3 billion years have been found in many places around the
planet. Moon rocks have been dated at 4.4 to 4.5 billion years. Meteorites that are left over
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from the earliest time of the solar system have been dated at 4.4 to 4.6 billion years.
2.3 Geologic Time Scale

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The geological time scale is based on the the geological rock record, which includes
erosion, mountain building and other geological events. Over hundreds to thousands of
millions of years, continents, oceans and mountain ranges have moved vast distances both
vertically and horizontally. For example, areas that were once deep oceans hundreds of
millions of years ago are now mountainous desert regions. The first geologic time scale was
proposed in 1913 by the British geologist Arthur Holmes (1890 - 1965). This was soon after
the discovery of radioactivity, and using it, Holmes estimated that the Earth was about 4
billion years old - this was much greater than previously believed.
Geologic time is often discussed in two forms:
Relative time ("chronostratic") -- subdivisions of the Earth's geology in a specific order
based upon relative age relationships (most commonly, vertical/stratigraphic position).
These subdivisions are given names, most of which can be recognized globally, usually
on the basis of fossils.
Absolute time ("chronometric") -- numerical ages in "millions of years" or some other
measurement. These are most commonly obtained via radiometric dating methods
performed on appropriate rock types.
The earliest geological time scales simply used the order of rocks laid down in a
sedimentary rock sequence (stratum) with the oldest at the bottom. However, a more
powerful tool was the fossilised remains of ancient animals and plants within the rock
strata. After Charles Darwin's publication Origin of Species (Darwin himself was also a
geologist) in 1859, geologists realised that particular fossils were restricted to particular
layers of rock. This built up the first generalised geological time scale.
Once formations and stratigraphic sequences were mapped around the world,
sequences could be matched from the faunal successions. These sequences apply from the
beginning of the Cambrian period, which contains the first evidence of macro-fossils. Fossil
assemblages 'fingerprint' formations, even though some species may range through several
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different formations. This feature allowed William Smith (an engineer and surveyor who
worked in the coal mines of England in the late 1700s) to order the fossils he started to
collect in south-eastern England in 1793. He noted that different formations contained

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different fossils and he could map one formation from another by the differences in the
fossils. As he mapped across southern England, he drew up a stratigraphic succession of
rocks although they appeared in different places at different levels.
By matching similar fossils in different regions throughout the world, correlations
were built up over many years. Only when radioactive isotopes were developed in the early
1900s did stratigraphic correlations become less important as igneous and metamorphic
rocks could be dated for the first time.
Divisions in the geological time scales still use fossil evidence and mark major
changes in the dominance of particular life forms. For example, the Devonian Period is
known as the 'Age of Fishes', as fish began to flourish at this stage. However, the end of the
Devonian was marked by the predominance of a different life form, plants, which in turn
denotes the beginning of the Carboniferous Period. The different periods can be further
subdivided (e.g. Early Cambrian, Middle Cambrian and Late Cambrian).
There is boundary events in geologic time scale. For example, the boundary between the
Permian and Triassic is marked by a global extinction in which a large percentage of Earth's
plant and animal species were eliminated. Another example is the boundary between the
Precambrian and the Paleozoic which is marked by the first appearance of animals with
hard parts.

Eons
Eons are the largest intervals of geologic time and are hundreds of millions of years in

duration. In the time scale above you can see the Phanerozoic Eon is the most recent eon
and began more than 500 million years ago.

Eras
Eons are divided into smaller time intervals known as eras. In the time scale above you

can see that the Phanerozoic is divided into three eras: Cenozoic, Mesozoic and Paleozoic.
Very significant events in Earth's history are used to determine the boundaries of the eras.
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Periods
Eras are subdivided into periods. The events that bound the periods are wide-spread in

their extent but are not as significant as those which bound the eras. In the time scale above

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you can see that the Paleozoic is subdivided into the Permian, Pennsylvanian,
Mississippian, Devonian, Silurian, Ordovician and Cambrian periods.

Epochs
Finer subdivisions of time are possible and the periods of the Cenozoic are frequently

subdivided into epochs. Subdivision of periods into epochs can be done only for the most
recent portion of the geologic time scale. This is because older rocks have been buried
deeply, intensely deformed and severely modified by long-term earth processes. As a result,
the history contained within these rocks can not be as clearly interpreted.
Our geologic time scale was constructed to visually show the duration of each time
unit. This was done by making a linear time line on the left side of the time columns.
Thicker units such as thee Proterozoic were longer in duration than thinner units such as the
Cenozoic.
Much of the relative geologic time scale had been constructed prior to the 20th
century, but much progress has been made in the last half-century toward defining the
absolute ages of the rocks on which the relative time scale is based. The modern Geologic
Time Scale as shown is a compendium of both relative and absolute age dating and
represents the most up-to-date assessment of Earth's history. Using a variety of techniques
and dating methods, geologists have been able to ascertain the age of the Earth, as well as
major eras, periods, and epochs within Earth's history. These dates are used to study, among
other things, the tempo or rates of environmental and biologic change occurring on Earth.

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2.
4

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Catatrophism and Uniformitarianism

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Catatrophism
Catastrophism is doctrine that explains the differences in fossil forms encountered in

successive stratigraphic levels as being the product of repeated cataclysmic occurrences and
repeated new creations. This doctrine generally is associated with the great French
naturalist Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). One 20th-century expansion on Cuvier's
views, in effect, a neocatastrophic school, attempts to explain geologic history as a
sequence of rhythms or pulsations of mountain building, transgression and regression of the
seas, and evolution and extinction of living organisms.
There have been dramatic changes in attitude towards catastrophism since 1980,
stimulated by the hypothesis of Luis Alvarez and colleagues that high iridium
concentrations found at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary throughout the world could be
taken as evidence that the mass extinction episode at the end of the Cretaceous Period had
been caused by the impact of a large asteroid. Alternatively, the iridium abundance anomaly
might have been the result of extensive vulcanism, which is known to have occurred at this
time, but this would also have to be regarded as a catastrophist mechanism, and could even
be linked to an impact.
In the case of catastrophism, as applied to geology (the study of the Earth) or
palaeontology (the study of fossils), there can be little doubt that, in the eyes of the
scientific establishment for a century or more, it has seemed as defunct as any theory could
be. Now, however, catastrophism is making a very real contribution to geology and
evolutionary theory. A resurrection would seem to have taken place.
Rightly or wrongly, it has generally been thought that the catastrophists of the
nineteenth century and earlier believed that God was directly involved in determining the
history of the Earth. So, for example, American palaeontologist, Steven Stanley, claimed in
1987 that catastrophism was the outmoded belief that sudden, violent and widespread
events caused by supernatural forces formed most of the rocks visible at the earth's surface.
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It should go without saying that twentieth century catastrophism, often called

neocatastrophism, is founded entirely in science, relying solely on natural forces for its
explanations, but was eighteenth and nineteenth century catastrophism completely

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different? Was it so dominated by supernatural elements that any scientific content it may
have claimed was without value? That was certainly the prevailing view for most of the
present century. Catastrophists have been condemned for putting dogma before
observational science, whereas their rivals, the gradualists (also called uniformitarians)
have been praised for taking the opposite stance.
This view of scientific uniformitarianism and dogmatic catastrophism was, at best,
over-simplistic, failing to take into account the range of beliefs and attitudes of individual
uniformitarians and catastrophists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. For many
centuries, the Church had exercised almost complete control over academic
communications in the western world, and everything was viewed within a spiritual
context. For most of that time, it would have been heretical to deny the testimony of the
Bible, as accepted by the Church, that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, and that
there had been a major cataclysm, the Flood in the time of Noah. Today, we ridicule
Archbishop Ussher, who in the middle of the seventeenth century calculated, from
information given in the Bible, that the Earth was created in 4004 BC. For whatever reason,
we ignore the fact that Ussher's chronology was supported, in very positive terms, by no
less a scientist than Sir Isaac Newton. Similarly, when rightfully praising Newton for
formulating the mathematical laws of gravity, we turn a blind eye to the fact that he thought
the gravitational forces themselves required a supernatural rather than a physical
explanation.

Uniformitarianism
In 1785, a geologist and physicist named James Hutton proposed another idea. He

thought that most of the features on the surface of the Earth were formed by slow, ongoing
geologic processes, not by sudden catastrophic events. Hutton didn't believe that there was
anything happening long ago that wasn't still happening on Earth today. In other words, 'the
present is the key to the past.' The erosion of landforms, the deposition of sediments, the
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drifting of continents and the eruption of volcanoes - all of these were happening long ago,
on roughly the same scale and at roughly the same rate as they are today.
Hutton's idea was a major turning point in the field of geology. He called it

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uniformitarianism: the theory that Earth's features are mostly accounted for by gradual,
small-scale processes that occurred over long periods of time. Also called gradualism, the
theory of uniformitarianism was fleshed out and popularized by another geologist, Charles
Lyell.
In the 1830s, Lyell published Principles of Geology, which explained the finer details
of uniformitarianism. The book became a keystone text for geologists and also influenced
the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin. But although Charles Lyell published the
actual book, it is still James Hutton who gets the credit for being 'The Father of Modern
Geology.' Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism gave geology a real boost that helped it
grow into the highly-detailed, functional discipline that it is today.
Principles of Geology was published right around the time when Western science was
trying to unravel itself from biblical and other religious associations. Scientists didn't feel
like they had to account for the great flood anymore. Instead, they stuck to the things they
could see: mountains eroding, volcanoes erupting, rivers shifting their courses.

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CHAPTER III
Paleontology
3.1 Fossils
Fossils are evidence of ancient life forms or ancient habitats which have been
preserved by natural processes. They can be the actual remains of a once living thing, such
as bones or seeds, or even traces of past events such as dinosaur footprints, or the ripple
marks on a prehistoric shore. Geologists can tell the age of a fossil through a variety of
radiometric dating techniques. The breakdown of radioactive isotopes of certain elements,
such as carbon, uranium and potassium takes place at a known rate, so the age of a rock or
mineral containing these isotopes can be calculated
The modern use of the word 'fossil' refers to the physical evidence of former life from
a period of time prior to recorded human history. This prehistoric evidence includes the
fossilised remains of living organisms, impressions and moulds of their physical form, and
marks/traces created in the sediment by their activities. There is no universally agreed age
at which the evidence can be termed fossilised, however it's broadly understood to
encompass anything more than a few thousand years. Such a definition includes our
prehistoric human ancestry and the ice age fauna (e.g. mammoths) as well as more ancient
fossil groups such as the dinosaurs, ammonites and trilobites.
The earliest reported fossil discoveries date from 3.5 billion years ago, however it
wasn't until approximately 600 million years ago that complex multi-cellular life began to
enter the fossil record, and for the purposes of fossil hunting the majority of effort is
directed towards fossils of this age and younger.
Fossils occur commonly around the world although just a small proportion of life
makes it into the fossil record. Most living organisms simply decay without trace after
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death
as natural processes recycle their soft tissues and even hard parts such as bone and

shell. Thus, the abundance of fossils in the geological record reflects the frequency of
favourable conditions where preservation is possible, the immense number of organisms

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that have lived, and the vast length of time over which the rocks have accumulated.
Types of Fossils
There are many ways in which a record of an organism can be preserved. Body fossils
can occur in many ways, including: unaltered preservation, recrystallization, replacement,
permineralization, carbonization, impressions, casts and internal molds. Unaltered
preservation implies the preservation of the original composition such as aragonite, calcite,
chitin, cellulose, and calcium phosphate.
Recrystallization means that the less stable hard part mineralogies are transformed,
through void time, by temperature and pressure to more stable minerals. This is usually a
destructive process, where much of the fine morphological detail (e.g. ribs on a clam shell)
is lost. The most common form of recrystallization in the invertebrate record is the change
from aragonite and/or Mg calcite to the more stable calcite form of CaCO3. In contrast to
recrystallization, which is a rearrangement of the crystal lattice in which the chemical
composition remains the same, replacement is an atom for atom substitution of a mineral's
components with the elements composing the replacing mineral. Thus, pyritization,
phosphotisation, silicification and dolomitization are all good examples of the replacement
process. One should also note that contrary to recrystallization, replacement is usually NOT
destructive; that is, you can see many of the original morphological details.
Permineralization is yet another mode of preservation, where pore-space is infilled by
percolating fluids. The pore-space is usually the xylem and phloem (transport tissues) of
woody tissue. Another name for this process is petrification.
Carbonization is often indicated by the shiny black texture of what appears to be an
impression of an organism, often a plant leaf or crushed arthropod. This process is due to
distillation. An organic film is formed as water is driven off. You can recognize
carbonization easily by the shiny black or dark brown color.
The next three modes (impression, cast and internal mold) are often confused, but they
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are distinct both in pattern and process. Impressions or external molds are nothing more
that what is produced when something is pressed into soft sediment and that "impression"
remains. You can recognize external molds because they show only external detail, and they

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are negative in relief. A cast on the other hand, is the sediment infilling of an external mold.
It will also show only external features, but will be positive in relief, not negative like an
external mold. Lastly, internal molds form when sediment infills a shell or skeleton,
hardens, and the shell is worn away. What is left is a mold showing internal features and
will most likely have positive relief.
Other Types of Fossils
1. Trace fossils. Unlike body fossils, where a portion of the actual organism or its
skeleton is preserved, trace fossils are the remains of an organism's activity or
behavior. Examples include tracks, trails, burrows, and borings. Trace fossils will be
covered in detail in a later lab.
2. Artifacts and oddballs. These are samples that could be considered fossils, yet they
do not fit formally with a true fossil's definition. Examples include tools used by
ancient humans, coprolites, and gastroliths ("stomach stones").
3. Pseudofossils. Pseudofossils are unusual structures formed inorganically that, by
chance, resemble body or trace fossils. Some classic examples include dendrites.
These are inorganic precipitates of manganese oxide that were described originally as
fossil algae.

3.2 Invertebrate Fossils


Invertebrates are multicellular animals without backbones. This very large group
makes up 95% of living animal species, including such familiar organisms as insects, crabs,
clams, and earthworms, as well as less familiar trilobites, brachiopods, and crinoids.
Invertebrates dominate habitats as diverse as the deep sea, tide pools, coral reefs, rocks on
stream bottoms, and soils. Although some invertebrates fossilize better than others, this
group has a long fossil record, extending back to the Precambrian.
Trilobites
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Trilobites are extinct arthropods. Usually, only the skeleton is found as a fossil, and is

rarely complete. The skeleton covered the upper side of the body and has a head (cephalon)
and a tail (pygidium) separated by a flexible, jointed thorax. The skeleton is also divided

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length-wise into three lobes (giving trilobites their name, "three lobed animal"). The middle
lobe (axial lobe) covered the mouth, stomach and gut. The other lobes (pleural lobes)
covered the walking legs and gills.
Trilobites could roll up into a ball for protection by bending the thorax and bringing
the tail underneath the head. Complete trilobite skeletons are relatively rare, and were
probably preserved when the sea floor was buried by mud during major storms. Normally,
the membranes that hold the skeleton together will decay and the skeleton will fall apart.
The various pieces will be scattered by waves, currents or scavenging animals. This means
that we usually find isolated parts of the head, tail and thorax.
Like all arthropods, trilobites grew by molting. The old skeleton was shed and
replaced by a new one. Trilobites molted many times during their lives. There were often
lines of weakness (suture lines) on the head, which split apart to help the animal emerge
from the shell. The outer edges of the head (the free cheeks or librigenae) separated from
the central region (cranidium).
Rare finds in which soft tissue is preserved show that the mouth and stomach of
trilobites lay beneath the axial lobe of the head. The gut extends straight back to an anus
located close to the end of the tail. Each segment of the body had a pair of simple, twobranched limb that were located beneath the pleural lobes. Each appendage consists of a
jointed walking leg and a comb-like gill branch. The walking leg carried sharp spines
would have been used to shred soft-bodied prey.
Some trilobites may have eaten soft prey like worms. Others may have sifted tiny food
particles from the mud on the sea floor. All trilobites lived in ocean waters. Most lived on
or burrowed into the sand and mud on the sea floor, but some swam above the bottom.
Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian Period (about 520 million years ago) and
disappeared at a major extinction event at end of the Permian Period (about 250 million
years ago). Trilobites can be found in rocks of the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian,
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Devonian and Carboniferous periods. They are among the most common fossils in
Cambrian and Ordovician rocks.

Brachiopods
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Brachiopods are rare in modern oceans, but were very common in the past (only 325
living species but more than 12,000 fossil species). The body is covered in a shell that is
made of two halves (valves) that are held in place by muscles. The valves can be opened
(by the muscles) at one end to allow water in and out of the shell, which brings food and
oxygen to the animal.
All but a few brachiopods fall into two basic types, the rhynchonelliform (or
articulate) brachiopods and the lingulate (or inarticulate) brachiopods. Rhynchonelliform
brachiopods have shells made calcium carbonate and interlocking pegs (teeth) and sockets
that form a hinge between the valves. The teeth are in one valve (the pedicle or ventral
valve) and the sockets are in the other (the brachial or dorsal valve). Many species were
anchored to the sea floor by a muscular stalk (pedicle) which emerged through a hole in the
pedicle valve (pedicle opening).
Modern lingulate brachiopods have a shell of two oval, flattened valves made of
calcium phosphate. Hinge teeth and sockets are absent. Similarly-shaped shells have a
fossil record that goes back to the Cambrian Period, more than 500 million years ago.
Burrowing lingulate brachiopods have an over-sized pedicle (longer than the shell) that
holds the animal in place in its burrow.
Brachiopods are suspension feeders, which means that they extract food (plankton,
particles of dead organic matter, etc.) out of water that they pump in and out of their shells.
Modern rhynchonelliform brachiopods live on the sea bottom and may be found on rocky,
sandy or muddy bottoms. They are unable to move. Although many rhynchonelliform
brachiopods are held in place by a pedicle, some extinct forms lost the pedicle and lay
freely on the sea bottom. Modern lingulate brachiopods burrow into sand and mud on the
sea floor. The oldest brachiopods can be found in rocks of early Cambrian age (about 530
million years old). They are still alive today. Brachiopods can be found in Cambrian,
Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Cretaceous rocks. They are particularly
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common in Ordovician-Carboniferous rocks.


Graptolites
Graptolites are tiny, extinct animals that lived together in groups or colonies and

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shared the same skeleton, which was like an apartment building. Each animal built its own
"apartment" or living chamber, and these were stuck together to make the colony. Some
colonies grew like branches of a tree, with many living chambers on each branch. Different
kinds of graptolite colonies had branches with different shapes. They could be straight,
curved or even spiral-shaped.
Graptolites were probably suspension feeders. They would have fed by straining
plankton and other pieces of food from the water. Like their living relatives (animals called
pterobranchs), they probably used tiny hairs (cilia) attached to a tentacle to grab food. Some
graptolites lived on the bottom of the ocean, where they would stick to the surface with a
special structure. They grew upwards, just like a plant, adding more living chambers as the
colony got older. Other graptolites floated in the seawater, perhaps drifting with the ocean
currents like seaweed. Graptolites lived from the Cambrian Period, about 510 million years
ago, disappearing in the Carboniferous Period, around 320 million years ago. Graptolites
that lived on the ocean floor appear in the fossil record first and became extinct later than
floating graptolites. Graptolites are most common in rocks of Ordovician and Silurian age.
Corals
Corals are cnidarians that live as polyps attached to the sea floor. Polyps of modern
stony (scleractinian) corals produce a hard skeleton that is easily fossilized. Extinct rugose
and tabulate corals also had hard skeletons and are commonly found as fossils. The
scleractinian corals are probably descendants of the rugose corals.
Rugose corals may be solitary (one polyp living alone) or colonial (many polyps living
together). In either case, each polyp produces a large cup-shaped skeleton (coralite) with
vertical (septa) and horizontal partitions to support its body. Tabulate corals are always
colonial. As they have smaller coralites than rugose corals, the polyps must also have been
smaller. Colony shapes vary. Favositid corals have coralites that are packed closely
together. Coralites of halysitid corals are more loosely arranged, joining together like links
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in a chain.
Coral polyps have tentacles with stinging cells around the mouth. They are used to
capture small animal prey (small invertebrates; plankton). Today's stony (scleractinian)

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corals can be found in shallow or deep water, but most species live in warm, clear, tropical
seas. They are important reef builders. All of the geological evidence shows that the extinct
rugose and tabulate corals also preferred shallow, tropical environments. The oldest corals
appeared in the Ordovician Period, about 470 million years ago. All corals of the Paleozoic
Era (rugose and tabulate corals) became extinct at the end of the Permian Period. Stony
corals appeared in the following Triassic Period and remain important today. Corals are
most common in Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous rocks of Oklahoma.
Crinoids
Crinoids are echinoderms and are true animals even though they are commonly called
sea lilies. The body lies in a cup-shaped skeleton (calyx) made out of interlocking calcium
carbonate plates. Arms attached to the calyx also have a plated skeleton and are used to
capture food particles. In most species, the calyx is anchored to the sea floor by a stem
made of a stack of disk-shaped plates. The tissue that holds the plates of the stem, calyx and
arms together will decay quickly after death. The skeleton usually falls apart and the plates
are scattered by waves, currents or scavenging animals. Rare complete specimens, like
those in the images above, were probably preserved when the skeleton was buried soon
after death.
Crinoids are suspension feeders, capturing food particles from the surrounding water
with tube feet on their arms. Crinoids are saltwater animals and most live attached to the
sea floor by their stalks. A few modern species have lost the stalk and can swim by moving
their arms. The oldest crinoids are found in rocks of Cambrian age. They are common in
the Paleozoic Era but not in younger time periods, perhaps because of the presence of more
predators in marine communities. They are relatively rare in today's oceans. Remains of
crinoids are common in the Paleozoic rocks, although complete specimens are relatively
rare. Most exposures of marine rocks contain disk-shaped plates from crinoid stems. The
Sam Noble Museum has specimens from Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian and
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Carboniferous rocks.
Echinoids
Echinoids (sea urchins) are echinoderms. They have a globe-, heart- or disk-shaped

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skeleton of interlocking plates of calcium carbonate that is covered by a thin layer of skin.
The mouth area is on the underside and the anus varies in position. All echinoderms have
tiny tubular structures called tube feet that may act as tiny walking legs or are used in
feeding or in extracting oxygen from seawater.
Regular echinoids have a globular skeleton shaped like a slightly squashed balloon.
The mouth area is on the lower (oral) surface, and the anus is in an area on the upper
(aboral) surface. Some plates have rounded knobs that are the attachment points for long
spines (which fall off after death). The tube feet poke out of tiny holes (pores) in other
plates.
Sand dollars have a flattened, disk-shaped skeleton. The petals are five regions with
pores for specialized tube feet that act as gills. The mouth is at the center of the oral
surface, but the anus has shifted from the aboral surface to a position on the side of the
skeleton (not visible in the photographs above). The spines (which drop off after death) are
small and used in burrowing. Like sand dollars, heart urchins have well-developed petals
and the anus is on the side of the skeleton instead of on the aboral surface. The skeleton is
covered with fine spines (which fall off after death) that are used in burrowing and for
movement.
Regular echinoids usually graze on marine algae using tooth-like structures in the
mouth. Most heart urchins and sand dollars are deposit feeders. All echinoids live on the
sea floor. Regular echinoids live on the surface but sand dollars and heart urchins burrow
below the surface. The record of echinoids goes back to the Ordovician Period (about 450
million years ago) and they are still around today. Echinoids are rarely found in the
Paleozoic rocks of Oklahoma. Heart urchins are common in the Cretaceous rocks of the
southern part of the state.

Snails
Snails (gastropods) are molluscs that usually have a coiled shell made of calcium

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carbonate with an opening or aperture at one end. The head and foot (a muscular organ used
for creeping over the surface) emerge from the aperture and can be pulled back into the
shell for protection. The upwardly coiled part of the shell is called the spire, which varies in

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height. Snail shells grow by adding new material to the edges, which leaves a pattern of
fine lines (growth lines) on the exterior.
Many snails are herbivores and others are carnivores. The modern cone shells are
venomous and are able to catch and eat small fishes. Snails live on land and in both
freshwater and saltwater. The oldest snails appeared in the Cambrian Period, more than 520
million years ago, and they are common in modern environments. Fossil snails can be
found in Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian and Cretaceous rocks.
Bivalves
Bivalves are molluscs with bodies that are enclosed in a shell of two halves (valves)
that can be opened at one end. The animal pumps water in and out of the shell. This water
brings dissolved oxygen for the animal to breathe with gills and, in most species, food
particles. Bivalves can be found in fresh water or saltwater environments. Edible shellfish,
including oysters, mussels, steamer clams and scallops, are bivalves.
The apex of each valve is termed the beak, and the shell opens at the opposite
end. Bivalve shells grow by adding new material (calcium carbonate) to the edges. This
leaves a pattern of fine lines (growth lines) on the exterior, that give a history of growth
(much like tree rings on the inside of a tree). On the inside, the shell has a set of
interlocking pegs (teeth) and sockets that form the hinge. There is at least one (usually two)
muscle scars that show where the muscles that close the shell (adductor muscles) attached
to the shell. Bivalve valves are mirror images of each other, and a plane that passes between
the valves is a plane of symmetry. The beak of each valve is off-center, so that a plane
passing through the middle of each valve is not a plane of symmetry.
Most bivalves are suspension feeders and eat particles of food from the surrounding
water. Some species ingest mud from the sea floor and extract any edible material that it
contains. Bivalves live on the bottom of rivers, lakes and seas. Some, like scallops, lie on
the surface but others burrow beneath it, where they have some protection from predators.
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The oldest bivalves appeared in the Cambrian Period, more than 500 million years ago, and
they are common in today's oceans. Although bivalves can be found in Ordovician,
Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian rocks, they are most common in the

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Cretaceous rocks of southern Oklahoma. They can be found alive in many of our state's
lakes and rivers.
Cephalopods
Cephalopods are swimming molluscs that live in the oceans. Squids and octopuses are
the best known of today's cephalopods. They are rarely found as fossils because they do not
have a hard shell. Nautilus is a living nautiloid cephalopod with a coiled shell. Nautiloids
and their extinct relatives, including ammonites and goniatites, are commonly found as
fossils.
The interior of a cephalopod shell is walled off into chambers. The animal lives in a
large chamber (body chamber) at the front, and the rest of the chambers contain gas and
fluid. A tube of living tissue (the siphuncle) passes backwards through chambers through
tubular openings in the walls. It controls the animal's buoyancy. As the animal grows, it
uses the siphuncle to change the amount of gas and fluid in each chamber. This prevents the
animal from sinking to the sea floor when it is resting.
The chamber walls cannot be seen on the outside of the shell. If the outer shell wall
has broken away, the edge of the chamber walls form suture lines. The suture line of
nautiloids is straight, but it is folded in other kinds of shelled cephalopods. The chamber
walls of goniatites and ammonites are curved like corrugated cardboard where they join the
underside of the outer shell wall, probably to strengthen the shell. This folding produces
more complex, folded suture lines. Goniatites and ammonites can be identified from the
shapes of their suture lines. Ammonites have more complexly folded sutures.
Cephalopods are carnivores. The modern Nautilus feeds on crustaceans and small
fishes. It has many small tentacles which are used to capture prey. Nautilus lives in
relatively deep ocean waters near coral reefs (down to 1000 feet or more). Geological
evidence shows that many of their extinct relatives lived in shallower water. All shelled
cephalopods (living or extinct) swam using a form of jet propulsion by squirting water out
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of their shells. The oldest shelled cephalopods appeared towards the end of the Cambrian
Period (about 500 million years ago) and some are still alive today. Ammonites lived in the
Jurassic and Cretaceous periods (about 200 million to 65 million years ago) and

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disappeared at a major extinction event. Goniatites are even older, and can be found in
rocks that formed during the middle Devonian through Permian periods. They became
extinct at the end of the Permian. Ammonites can be found in Cretaceous rocks of southern
Oklahoma. Goniatites are common in Carboniferous rocks. Nautiloids are relatively rare,
and are most likely to be found in Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous rocks.
3.3 The Preservation of Fossils
Fossil preservation is the process by which the remains of an organism are transformed
into rock or impressions within sedimentary rock. When you look at a fossil dinosaur bone,
you're not actually looking at bone. You're looking at a rock in the shape of a bone. The
minerals in the dinosaur's bones were replaced by other minerals. The cavities were filled
with sedimentary material, and, over millions of years, the bone was turned into rock.
But not all dinosaur bones became fossils. Fossil preservation is tricky. It takes a lot of
luck and special circumstances for any creature to get preserved as a fossil. When an
organism dies, its body immediately begins to decompose. Bacteria and insects get right to
work, breaking down the plant or animal's organic materials. Scavengers come running,
grabbing arms and legs, dashing off with body parts to munch the meat off the bones.
Fluctuating temperatures stretch and shrink the body's tissues. Rain and sun degrade skin
and bones. Herds of animals trample the remaining structures, and beetles chew up
whatever happens to be left.
One of the keys to preservation is resistance. Either the conditions are mild enough
(calm water, little oxygen) not to destroy much of the organism, or those parts that do get
preserved are the most resistant to chemical and physical damage. Good examples of this
are the shells of clams and the teeth of mammals. Both of these examples demonstrate that
there is a preservational bias for hard parts compared to soft parts.
The nature of preservation is dependent upon the interaction of several factors. The
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composition of the organism and its structure play vital roles in how the body will react to
the physical and chemical activities that normally break down or damage dead organisms.
Intimately related to this is the sedimentary environment in which the organism lived. It

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will determine the type and intensity of the physical and chemical processes. These all
contribute to the post-depositional changes (such as replacement, recrystallization,
carbonization, the formation of casts, etc.) that take place during fossilization. And finally,
numerical abundance will affect the nature of preservation by increasing or decreasing the
chances of something being preserved, simply because of the sheer numbers or lack of
certain organisms (this does make sense, if you think about it for awhile).
As mentioned above, the bias of hard parts over soft parts can provide considerable
problems for paleontologists. Often, as is the case with most molluscs for example, much of
the diagnostic information is in the soft part morphology, making it difficult to say certain
specific things about organisms whose only record is in the hard parts. It is then necessary
to draw upon recent analogues and extrapolate that information back to the fossil record.
This can be dangerous if the past was not entirely like the present in environmental or
ecological conditions. We call this the "pull of the Recent analogue" and it can be a serious
problem if not recognized at the outset.
The term 'fossilisation' refers to a variety of often complex processes that enable the
preservation of organic remains within the geological record. It frequently includes the
following conditions: rapid and permanent burial/entombment - protecting the specimen
from environmental or biological disturbance; oxygen deprivation - limiting the extent of
decay and also biological activity/scavenging; continued sediment accumulation as opposed
to an eroding surface - ensuring the organism remains buried in the long-term; and the
absence of excessive heating or compression which might otherwise destroy it.
Fossil evidence is typically preserved within sediments deposited beneath water, partly
because the conditions outlined above occur more frequently in these environments, and
also because the majority of the Earth's surface is covered by water (70%+). Even fossils
derived from land, including dinosaur bones and organisms preserved within amber
(fossilised tree resin) were ultimately preserved in sediments deposited beneath water i.e. in
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wetlands, lakes, rivers, estuaries or swept out to sea.


Fossilisation can also occur on land, albeit to a far lesser extent, and includes (for
example) specimens that have undergone mummification in the sterile atmosphere of a cave

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or desert. However in reality these examples are only a delay to decomposition rather than a
lasting mode of fossilisation and specimens require permanent storage in a climate
controlled environment in order to limit its affects.
In the following example a fish is used to illustrate the stages associated with
fossilisation within off-shore marine sediments. This is just one summarised example, in
reality there are countless scenarios that create the conditions necessary for fossilisation in
marine sediments.

Death
Having reached adulthood and returned to its birth place to spawn, this particular fish

reaches the end of its life and dies. Soon after death the body of the fish becomes waterlogged and sinks to the seafloor (note that quite often the gases produced during
decomposition cause the carcass to float back to the surface, so the final resting place may
be some distance away). More often than not the carcass would be pulled apart and
scattered by scavenging crustaceans and other fish, however on this occasion the absence of
any large scavengers leaves the fish relatively undisturbed.

Left: A fish returns to its birth place to spawn. Right: Having spawned the fish dies and shortly after sinks to
the seafloor.

Although fossils can be found in sediments deposited in turbulent (high energy)


environments near the coastline, complete/articulated skeletons require undisturbed
conditions. A quiet seafloor with minimal light, low oxygen levels and a soft muddy
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composition are among the conditions suitable for preserving organic remains.

Decay and Burial


After several weeks the fish is partially decomposed. Despite the calm conditions on

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the seafloor, several thousand meters into the bedrock pressure is building along an active
geological fault. Suddenly the stressed rock slips, sending shockwaves to the rock above
and causing the sediment nearby to mobilise. The mobile sediment travels across the
seafloor burying the fish in the process, in what is often termed a rapid burial event. Once
entombed beneath the sediment the remaining flesh and soft tissue are broken down by
bacteria, leaving just the skeleton in the position of burial.

Left: After several weeks the soft body tissues have mostly decayed. Right: Tectonic activity induces nearby
sediment to mobilise, burying the fish in the event.

Rapid burial is a common component for optimal fossilisation, as prolonged exposure


would otherwise increase the likelihood of disturbance from scavengers and/or currents.
Burial may also occur quickly if a high volume of sediment is deposited in the area
following a period of heavy rain that delivers sediment from major rivers (for example).

Sediment Accumulation and Permineralisation


Over time the skeleton is gradually buried deeper by accumulating sediment. Slowly

the weight of the sediment compacts the underlying areas, pressing the grains together,
driving excess water out, and depositing minerals in the pores, and ultimately turning the
soft sediment to hard rock - a process known as lithification.
As this process takes place, minerals contained within the waters-saturated sediment
replace the original minerals in the skeleton and fill any voids formed as parts of the
skeleton dissolve. The process of mineral replacement is known as permineralisation and
results in a remineralised copy of the original skeleton.
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Left: Several months pass and all that remains of the buried fish is its skeleton.
Right: As times passes more sediment accumulates above the fish and the skeleton is gradually compressed
and permineralised.

Uplift and Exposure


Many millions of years pass and the rock remains buried deep within the bedrock;

however tectonic forces associated with the collision between neighbouring continental
plates have begun to buckle and uplift the bedrock, raising it above sea level and exposing
it to erosion. Gradually, the exposed rock is stripped away, until eventually the top of the
fish's skull is visible at the surface.

Left: Over time the rock is distorted and uplifted by geological forces associated with continental movement,
raising it above sea level.
Right: The uplifted rock is exposed to weathering and gradually erodes away, eventually exposing the tip of
the fish's skull at the surface.

Discovery and Extraction


Finally, having lain beneath the ground for millions of years, the partially exposed

skull is spotted by a palaeontologist, who undertakes a careful extraction of the skeleton.


The process requires patience and precision work to avoid damaging the specimen; a
generous amount of rock is retained around the specimen to protect it.
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Left: A palaeontologist recognises the fish by the small area of skull exposed and begins to carefully extract
the specimen.
Right: A Pomognathus fish from Houghton Quarry - the skull is clearly visible, and what parts of the skeleton
remain are obscured within the chalk matrix.

Modes of Preservation
1. Unaltered hardparts. Occasionally an organism's skeleton is preserved intact without
any chemical alteration of the original mineralogy. This mode of preservation
becomes increasingly rarer for fossils of older ages.
2. Mold. Often, a fossil has been encased in sediment and that sediment becomes
cemented, and the original skeletal material dissolves away completely leaving a
void. The dissolution leaves behind an impression (or mold) of the skeletal remains.
3. Carbonization. Carbonization occurs when all organic volatiles are distilled away
because of the effects of heat and/or pressure, leaving a carbon film remnant of the
organism. This usually occurs with organisms rich in carbon that possess thin or no
skeletal material. Coal is an example of carbonized plant debris.
4. Permineralization. Skeletal material can be quite porous. If the pores are filled in by
foreign minerals that precipitate out of solution, the fossil is said to be
permineralized. Petrified wood is an example of wood that has been permineralized
by silica.
5. Replacement. This occurs when skeletal material is replaced, molecule by molecule,
by some new alien material. This process occurs gradually over a long period of
time as the original mineralogy dissolves away and a new mineral precipitates in its
place. Examples include: silicification - where calcium carbonate is replaced by
silica, and pyritization - where pyrite replaces calcium carbonate.
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6. Recrystallization. This mode of preservation is probably the most difficult to


understand and recognize. Recrystallization occurs when the original mineral
crystals are altered in size and/or geometry over time, yet the chemical composition
remains unchanged. An example is aragonite recrystallizing to calcite.

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3.4 Fossils and The Evolution


Most of the evidence for evolution comes from the fossil record. Fossils show how
much, or how little, organisms have changed over time. One of the problems with the fossil
record is that it contains gaps. Not all organisms fossilise well, and there will be many
fossils that have been destroyed by the movements of the Earth, or simply not yet been
discovered.
The fossil record contains many well-documented examples of the transition from one
species into another, as well as the origin of new physical features. Evidence from the fossil
record is unique, because it provides a time perspective for understanding the evolution of
life on Earth. This perspective is not available from other branches of science or in the other
databases that support the study of evolution.
This section covers four examples of evolution from the incredibly rich and wonderful
fossil record of life on Earth. We've chosen examples of vertebrates, animals with
backbones, primarily because most of us identify more easily with this group rather than
with sassafras or snails or starfish. However, we could have chosen any of many studies of
evolutionary changes seen in fossil plants, invertebrates - animals without backbones such
as the Chesapecten scallops (above), or single-celled organisms. We'll examine the
evolution of legs in vertebrates as well as the evolution of birds, mammals, and whales.

Evolution of Vertebrate Legs


The possession of legs defines a group of vertebrate animals called tetrapods - as

distinct from vertebrate animals whose appendages are fins, the fishes. In most fishes, the
thin bony supports of the fins are arranged like the rays of a fan; hence these fishes are
called 'ray-finned' fish. Trout, perch, and bass are examples of living ray-fins.
Certain fishes are called 'lobe-finned,' because of the stout, bony supports in their
appendages. Lobe-finned fish first appear in the fossil record in early Late Devonian time,
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about 377 mya. The bony supports of some lobe-finned fishes are organized much like the
bones in the forelimbs and hind limbs of tetrapods: a single upper bone, two lower bones,
and many little bones that are the precursors of wrist and ankle bones, hand and foot bones,

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and bones of the fingers and toes that are first known in Late Devonian amphibian-like
animals from about 364 mya. These animals were the first tetrapods. Many similarities also
exist in the skull bones and other parts of the skeleton between Devonian lobe-finned fishes
and amphibian-like tetrapods. In fact, in certain fossils the resemblances are so close that
the definition of which are fish and which are tetrapods is hotly debated.
In 1998, a lobe-finned fish was described from Upper Devonian rocks from about 370
mya in central Pennsylvania (Daeschler and Shubin, 1998). This fish has bones in its
forelimb arranged in a pattern nearly identical to that of some Late Devonian amphibianlike tetrapods. The pattern includes a single upper-arm bone (humerus), two forearm bones
(radius and ulna), and many little bones connected by joints to the forearm bones in the
positions of wrist and finger bones. However, the finger-like bones look like unjointed fin
rays, rather than the truly jointed finger bones of tetrapods. Should the animal be called a
fish or a tetrapod? It's hard to say. On the basis of the finger bones, it could be classified as
a fish, whereas, on the basis of the large limb bones, the animal could be classified as a
tetrapod.

Evolution of Birds
Most paleontologists regard birds as the direct descendants of certain dinosaurs - as

opposed to descendants of some other group of reptiles. Paleontologists and zoologists have
long accepted that birds and reptiles are related. The two groups share many common traits
including many skeletal features, the laying of shelled eggs, and the possession of scales,
although in birds, scales are limited to the legs. Among modern birds, the embryos even
have rudimentary fingers on their wings. In one modern bird, the South American hoatzin,
Opisthocomus hoazin, the wings of the juvenile have large moveable claws on the first and
second digits. The young bird uses these claws to grasp branches.
The descent of birds from dinosaurs was first proposed in the late 1860s by Thomas
Henry Huxley, who was a famous supporter of Darwin and his ideas. Evidence from fossils
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for the reptile-bird link came in 1861 with the discovery of the first nearly complete
skeleton of Archaeopteryx lithographica in Upper Jurassic limestones about 150 million
years old near Solenhofen, Germany. The skeleton of Archaeopteryx is clearly dinosaurian.

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It has a long bony tail, three claws on each wing, and a mouth full of teeth. However, this
animal had one thing never before seen in a reptile - it had feathers, including feathers on
the long bony tail. Huxley based his hypothesis of the relationship of birds to dinosaurs on
his detailed study of the skeleton of Archaeopteryx.
One of the leading scholars of the bird-dinosaur relationship is John Ostrom of Yale
University, who has summarized all the details of the skeletal similarities of Archaeopteryx
with small, bipedal Jurassic dinosaurs such as Compsognathus. Compsognathus belongs to
the group of dinosaurs that includes the well-known Velociraptor, of Jurassic Park fame,
and Deinonychus, which Ostrom called the ultimate killing machine. The skeleton of
Archaeopteryx is so similar to that of Compsognathus that some specimens of
Archaeopteryx were at first incorrectly classified as Compsognathus. Ostrom regarded
Archaeopteryx as being on the direct line of descent of birds from reptiles.
New fossil specimens from Mongolia, China, Spain, Argentina, and Australia have
added to our knowledge of the early history of birds, and many paleontologists now reckon
that the turkey on our Thanksgiving tables is a descendant of the dinosaurs.

Evolution of Mammals
The oldest reptiles having mammal-like features, the synapsids, occur in rocks of

Pennsylvanian age formed about 305 mya. However, the first mammals do not appear in
the fossil record until Late Triassic time, about 210 mya. Hopson (1994) noted, "Of all the
great transitions between major structural grades within vertebrates, the transition from
basal amniotes [egg-laying tetrapods except amphibians] to basal mammals is represented
by the most complete and continuous fossil record. Structural evolution of particular
functional systems has been well investigated, notably the feeding mechanism... and middle
ear, and these studies have demonstrated the gradual nature of these major adaptive
modifications." A widely used definition of mammals is based on the articulation or joining
of the lower and upper jaws. In mammals, each half of the lower jaw is a single bone called
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the dentary; whereas in reptiles, each half of the lower jaw is made up of three bones. The
dentary of mammals is joined with the squamosal bone of the skull. This condition evolved
between Pennsylvanian and Late Triassic times. Evolution of this jaw articulation can be

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traced from primitive synapsids (pelycosaurs), to advanced synapsids (therapsids), to


cynodonts, to mammals. In mammals, two of the extra lower jaw bones of synapsid reptiles
(the quadrate and articular bones) became two of the middle-ear bones, the incus (anvil)
and malleus (hammer). Thus, mammals acquired a hearing function as part of the small
chain of bones that transmit air vibrations from the ear drum to the inner ear.

Evolution of Whales
During the 1990s our understanding of whale evolution made a quantum jump. In

1997, Gingerich and Uhen noted that whales (cetaceans) "... have a fossil record that
provides remarkably complete evidence of one of life's great evolutionary adaptive
radiations: transformation of a land mammal ancestor into a diversity of descendant sea
creatures." The trail of whale evolution begins in Paleocene time, about 60 mya, with a
group of even-toed, hoofed, trotting, scavenging carnivorous mammals called
mesonychians. The first whales (pakicetids) are known from lower Eocene rocks, that
formed about 51 mya; the pakicetids are so similar to mesonychians that some were
misidentified as belonging to that group. However, the teeth of pakicetids are more like
those of whales from middle Eocene rocks, about 45 mya, than they are like the teeth of
mesonychians. Pakicetids are found in nonmarine rocks and it is not clear how aquatic they
were.
In 1994, Ambulocetus natans, whose name means "walking whale that swims," was
described from middle Eocene rocks of Pakistan. This species provides fossil evidence of
the origin of aquatic locomotion in whales. Ambulocetus preserves large forelimbs and hind
limbs with large hands and feet, and the toes have hooves as in mesonychians. Ambulocetus
is regarded as having webbing between the toes and it could walk on land as well as swim;
thus, it lived both in and out of the water. From late Eocene time onward, evolution in
whales shows reduction of the hind-limbs, modification of the forelimbs and hands into
flippers for steering, development of a massive tail, etc.; all of these changes are
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modifications for the powerful swimming of modern whales. The fossil Rodhocetus from
the upper Eocene rocks, about 38 mya, of Pakistan already shows some of these
modifications.

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3.5 The Extinction of Dinosaurs


Sixty-five million years ago the dinosaurs died out along with more than 50% of other
life forms on the planet. This mass extinction is so dramatic that for many years it was used
to mark the boundary between the Cretaceous Period, when the last dinosaurs lived, and the
Tertiary Period, when no dinosaurs remained. This is called the Cretaceous/Tertiary (or
K/T) boundary, and the associated extinction is often termed the K/T extinction event.The
name "Tertiary" is a holdover from the early days of geology, and many geologists now
prefer the term "Paleogene" for the time period that immediately follows the Cretaceous.
These scientists refer to the Cretaceous/Paleogene or K/P boundary, which represents the
same moment in time as the K/T event. Since their discovery in the nineteenth century, the
reason for the dinosaurs' demise has been a matter of speculation and debate. Early
paleontologists, working prior to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection,
suggested that dinosaurs represented the remains of animals that had perished in the
Biblical Flood. This explained both the fact and speed of their disappearance. But as other
extinctions came to light, and Darwin's theory gained acceptance, this explanation fell out
of favor.
For many decades, the fossil record of dinosaurs was poorly known. During that time
it was clear that dinosaurs had gone extinct, but it was not yet understood that this
extinction was relatively sudden and simultaneous with those of many other species. Only
at the end of the nineteenth century did paleontologists realize that nearly all dinosaurs had
gone extinct within a brief period of time at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
For most of the next century, scientists focused on explanations for how the extinction
might have occurred. Most theories focused on climate change, perhaps brought on by
volcanism, lowering sea level, and shifting continents. But hundreds of other theories were
developed, some reasonable but others rather far-fetched (including decimation by visiting
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aliens, widespread dinosaur "wars", and "pal oweltschmertz" the idea that dinosaurs
just got tired and went extinct). It was often popularly thought that the evolving mammals
simply ate enough of the dinosaurs' eggs to drive them to extinction.

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Regardless of the details, most of these theories shared the common thought that
dinosaurs were a group of animals that had reached the end of their evolutionary life. Their
extinction was seen as inevitable, the product of having evolved for too long. In most
extinction scenarios, the dinosaurs were simply unable to cope with competition from
mammals and the changing climate, and so they all went extinct.
As dinosaur science began to alter this hypothesis, producing a new view of dinosaurs
as successful and viable organisms, many of these extinction theories became less tenable.
New information from fossil localities suggested that many other organisms, most unrelated
to dinosaurs, had also gone extinct at the same time. New theories were required to explain
these new discoveries and newly understood facts. A favored theory was that tectonically
induced climate change interfered with food chains, disrupting them enough to cause
widespread extinction among many different organisms.

Alvarez Hypothesis: Origin and Evidence


In the late 1970's geologist Walter Alvarez, and his father, Nobel-prize winning

physicist Luis Alvarez, identified an unusual clay layer at the K/T boundary in Italy. This
clay contained an unusually high concentration of the rare-earth element iridium 30 times
the level typically found in the Earth's crust. Why was the discovery of iridium so
important? Although iridium is rare in the crust, it is abundant in many meteorites and
asteroids as well as the Earth's core. With this evidence, Alvarez hypothesized that an
asteroid must have struck the Earth right at the K/T boundary. Further investigation has
revealed that this iridium-rich layer of clay occurs at more than 100 sites around the world,
providing evidence that this was truly a worldwide event.
These pieces, along with high levels of iridium, provide evidence for an extraterrestrial
impact at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Thus, the end of the dinosaurs reign may have
been caused by an asteroid, not by sea level change or volcanism. Initially this theory was
highly controversial, but today an extraterrestrial impact is considered to be a key factor in
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the K/T extinction event.


One of the main objections to the Alvarez theory was the absence of a 65-million-yearold crater anywhere on the Earths surface. Surely such an enormous asteroid impact would

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have left a sizable crater behind. In 1991, geologists discovered evidence for a huge crater
at Chicxulub (pronounced CHIK-shoo-loob), on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Although the crater had long since been buried by hundreds of meters of sediment, surveys
of magnetic and gravitational fields revealed its circular structure. In addition, recent
sensitive topographic mapping has shown a low mound that represents part of the craters
rim. At 180 km across, and dated to 65 mya, the crater is of the right size and age to have
been caused by a 10 km asteroid hitting Earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period.

Effects of the Asteroid Impact


The devastation caused by such an event is difficult to imagine. The asteroid would

have hit with the force of 100,000 billion tons of TNT. This would have generated an
earthquake one thousand times greater than the largest ever recorded, with winds of over
400 kph. A massive fireball would have boiled nearby seas, destroying everything for
thousands of kilometers. Forests throughout most of North America and some of South
America would have been flattened by the shock wave. Evidence of a giant tsunami has
been found around the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, as well as in Spain and Brazil. It
may have had an effect as far away as New Zealand.
Despite the enormity of the destruction from the initial impact, the dinosaurs and their
contemporaries might have survived and eventually recovered, but the subsequent longterm effects of the blast were even more deadly. Ninety thousand cubic kilometers of debris
would have been blasted into the atmosphere, some reaching into space only to re-enter at
high speeds. This could have heated the atmosphere sufficiently to ignite global forest fires.
While the heavier pieces of ejecta settled back down on Earth, fine dust particles would
have remained in the atmosphere and significantly blocked sunlight, causing an effect
called an impact winter. There is much debate about the duration and severity of the
impact winter following the K/T impact, but the darkness and cold temperatures might have
reduced photosynthesis and collapsed food chains globally.
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The amount of carbon and sulfur contained in the rock at the impact site would have

aggravated these devastating effects. As much as 100 billion tons of sulfur and 10 trillion
tons of carbon would have been vaporized by the impact and blown into the atmosphere.

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The resulting sulfate aerosols would have stayed in the atmosphere for several years; the
resulting carbon dioxide would have stayed airborne for several hundred years. Initially the
sulfate aerosols would have contributed to global cooling by blocking out the sun, before
precipitating as acid rain. After the dust and sulfates settled out and ended the cooling,
global warming would have begun. The carbon dioxide levels, being two to three times
normal, would have caused extreme greenhouse conditions, raising global temperatures by
as much as 10C. Although some life forms may have survived the years of darkness and
freezing temperatures, many surely died out in the subsequent centuries of heat.

Other Extinction Hypotheses


Although the impact hypothesis is the most widely accepted explanation of the K/T

extinction, other theories still remain. Evidence of widespread volcanism, particularly at the
Deccan traps in India, correlates with this moment in time as well. Prolonged volcanism
could have led to atmospheric and climatic changes similar to those proposed for an
asteroid impact. However, volcanism does not provide an alternate explanation for the high
levels of iridium in the clay layer, because high concentrations of iridium occur deep in
Earth's core rather than in the mantle, which is the source of the magma that was erupted.
One debate centers on whether the extinction was truly as sudden as it appears, or
whether this is an artifact of the geological record. Some scientists believe that dinosaurs
went extinct gradually, and were doing so for millions of years prior to the K/T boundary.
Studies in the Western Interior of North America have suggested that the latest layers of
Cretaceous sediments contain fewer dinosaur species than those below. These results have
been challenged by other researchers, who claim that no such decrease is apparent in the
Late Cretaceous record.

Deep-sea Evidence for the Impact Hypothesis


The general acceptance of the K/T asteroid impact theory has led many scientists to

focus on the specific mechanisms that may have contributed to this dramatic extinction
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event. Although the impact was an important factor in the extinction of so many organisms,
the event has also proven to be complex. In particular, the selectivity of the extinction has
puzzled many paleontologists: why did dinosaurs go extinct but not crocodiles or turtles?

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Why did marine reptiles, belemnites, and ammonites disappear, but not fish or sharks? Why
some mammals and not others?
Other scientists have focused on the extinction record preserved in deep-sea sediments
in order to better understand the chain of events that followed the asteroid impact. Dr. Brian
T. Huber, micropaleontologist in the National Museum of Natural History Dept. of
Paleobiology, has studied evidence from a deep-sea drilling core taken 500-580 km of the
northeastern coast of Florida during an Ocean Drilling Program cruise. Huber studied
microscopic marine organisms called foraminifera taken from the core. The specimens
were extracted from both Cretaceous and Tertiary age sediments. In one 40 cm core
interval, he noticed a dramatic difference between the types of planktonic (floating)
foraminifera that were alive prior to the boundary event and those that lived after. Prior to
the extinction, large, ornate planktonic foraminifera were abundant, but afterward most
specimens belonged to smaller, less ornate species. Overall more than 90% of the
Cretaceous planktonic foraminifera had gone extinct. This is comparable to the extinction
rate of calcareous nannofossils, another group of microscopic fossils that are abundant in
the deep-sea sediment. In addition to the foraminifera, Huber also found specimens of
shocked quartz and tektites, direct evidence of the impact itself.
The core also offered visual clues to the changes that occurred at the time of the
extinction. The sediment undergoes a dramatic color change from white Cretaceous chalk
in the lower portion of the core, to a dark gray, coarse-grained tektite layer in the middle, to
a whitish gray Tertiary muddy chalk in the upper part. At the top of the tektite layer is a
very thin, rust-colored, iron-rich layer known as the fireball layer. This rust layer, which has
been found at a number of complete K/T impact horizons around the world, contains actual
particles of the asteroid along with fine soot and ash that rained down on Earth's surface
after the collision. This provides further evidence supporting the asteroid impact
hypothesis.
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Post-Extinction Recovery
It has been estimated that the planet took 1-2 million years to fully recover from the

asteroid impact. In deep-sea sediments, several very small sized species of foraminifera

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with simple, unadorned shells appeared within several thousand years after the extinction
event, but several million years elapsed before species diversity, shell ornamentation, and
shell sizes increased to values comparable to those that occurred before the impact event.
The small sized planktonic foraminifera are considered opportunistic species that had rapid
rates of reproduction and higher tolerances to changing environmental conditions.
A similar pattern of extinction and recovery has been observed in the North American
fossil land plant record. In southwestern North Dakota, where the fossil record of land
plants is most complete and best studied, abrupt extinction of 70 to 90% of plant species
was immediately followed by a dramatic increase in the abundance of ferns. Because the
North American forests were decimated by the asteroid impact, ferns were able to rapidly
disperse and dominate much of the newly cleared land surface for hundreds to thousands of
years afterwards. Full recovery of North American forests, resulting from appearance of
new species and repopulation by surviving species, took from several hundred thousand to
over a million years. Of the many long-term effects produced by the global devastation at
the K/T boundary, the most obvious is the disappearance of all non-avian dinosaurs. Yet the
close of the Age of Dinosaurs meant the start of the Age of Mammals. Although mammals
had existed alongside the dinosaurs for hundreds of millions of years, they had remained
small and comparatively rare. The extinction of the dinosaurs allowed mammals to come
into dominance, as they evolved into new and larger forms throughout the Tertiary Period.
Within the first five million years of the Paleocene Epoch, large mammals had
appeared for the first time. Some of them were the earliest members of modern groups,
including primitive carnivorans and ungulates. The first primates (members of the
mammalian order that includes humans) appeared about 10 million years after the K/T
boundary event. Modern bird groups diversified as well, in the absence of pterosaurs
(which had also gone extinct). Perhaps without the extinction of the dinosaurs, the
evolution of mammals and the subsequent rise of humans would have never happened. And
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although recent history might well be called the Human Age, the time that the human race
has dominated planet Earth is but a blink in geologic terms. It is certain that the world will
change again. Indeed, we may be in the midst of another mass extinction event right now.

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3.6 K-T Boundary


The CretaceousTertiary extinction event, or CretaceousPalaeogene extinction event,
was about 66 million years ago. It may be called the K/T extinction event or even K/Pg
event for short. This is the famous event which killed the dinosaurs at the end of the
Cretaceous period. It was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species. The
event marks the end of the Mesozoic era and the beginning of the Cainozoic era.
In the last few decades, a new theory has arisen; an asteroid strike millions of years
ago drastically changed the Earths environment. It was this event that pushed the dinosaurs
over the edge into extinction. the evidence for this asteroid impact is a thin dark line found
in layers of sediment around the world; evidence that something devastating happened to
the planet 65 million years ago. This line is known as the K-T boundary.
K is actually the traditional abbreviation for the Cretaceous period, and T is the
abbreviation for the Tertiary period. So the K-T boundary is the point in between the
Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. Geologists have dated this period to about 65.5 million
years ago.
When physicist Luis Alvarez and geologist Walter Alvarez studied the K-T boundary
around the world, they found that it had a much higher concentration of iridium than
normal between 30-130 times the amount of iridium you would expect. Iridium is rare on
Earth because it sank down into the center of the planet as it formed, but iridium can still be
found in large concentrations in asteroids. When they compared the concentrations of
iridium in the K-T boundary, they found it matched the levels found in meteorites.
The researchers were even able to estimate what kind of asteroid must have impacted
the Earth 65.5 million years ago to throw up such a consistent layer of debris around the
entire planet. They estimated that the impactor must have been about 10 km in diameter,
and release the energy equivalent of 100 trillion tons of TNT.
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When that asteroid struck the Earth 65.5 million years ago, it destroyed a region

thousands of kilometers across, but also threw up a dust cloud that obscured sunlight for
years. That blocked photosynthesis in plants the base of the food chain and eventually

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starved out the dinosaurs.


Researchers now think that the asteroid strike that created the K-T boundary was
probably the Chicxulub Crater. This is a massive impact crater buried under Chicxulub on
the coast of Yucatan, Mexico. The crater measures 180 kilometers across, and occurred
about 65 million years ago. Geologists arent completely in agreement about the connection
between the Chicxulub impact and the extinction of the dinosaurs. Some believe that other
catastrophic events might have helped push the dinosaurs over the edge, such as massive
volcanism, or a series of impact events.

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CHAPTER IV
Plate Tectonics and Geosyncline
4.1 The Geosynclinal Theory
The major mountain-building idea that was supported from the 19 th century and into
the 20th is the geosynclinal theory. The fundamental concepts for geosynclinal theory were
introduced in James Halls presidential address for the Geological Society of America at the
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Montreal in 1857.
His ideas were extravagant at the time; therefore, he was urged in a friendly letter by the
secretary of the GSA, Joseph Henry, to introduce it slowly. Because of this, his address was
not published until 1882. A principle concept of the theory is that the direction of a given
mountain chain corresponds to the original line of greatest sediment accumulation. James
Dana helped clarify the theory in his final edition of the Manual of Geology. In this piece,
he recognized Halls beginnings and concisely formulated the theory.
Geosyclinal theory can be divided into two main stages. The first involves major
sediment deposition. Following this is an event called the mountain making crisis, which
is very quick relative to the first stage. Dana described the crustal down-warp area as the
geosynclinal region, and the product of the process as the mountain chainsynclinorium. Dana also reinstated that the trend of the mountain range follows the
deepest part of the geosyclinal trough. Geosynclines are further classified into
miogeosynclines, eugeosynclines, and orthogeosynclines; dependent on rock strata,
location, and nature of the mountain system. A miogeosyncline forms along the passive
margin of a continent and is comprised of sandstones, limestones, and shales (Continental
Drift). Eugeosynclines are composed of thick sequences of deep marine sediments; they are
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often more deformed and metamorphosed (Continental Drift). Orthogeosynclines are linear
geosynclinals belts that lie between continental and oceanic terrains (Continental Drift).
There were a handful of suggested hypotheses to support the mechanism of

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geosynclinal theory, and each was more strongly favored at different times. James Hall
supported what was known as the gravitational sliding hypothesis (Mountain Building and
Drifting Continents). This hypothesis relied on isostatic upwarping of geosynclines, paired
with the slipping of strata over basement rocks along a flat shear surface (Mountain
Building and Drifting Continents). James Dana preferred the contracting Earth theory
(Mountain Building and Drifting Continents). This theory relied on the idea that the earth
began in a fully molten state, and has been cooling since (Richardson). One can liken this
theory to a grape becoming a raisin (Richardson). As the crust cools, it contracts
(Richardson). This compressional, lateral force was thought to crinkle up the geosynclinal
sediment troughs to produce mountain ranges (Richardson). No matter the mechanism, it is
important to note that they all embraced purely lateral crustal movement.
Scientists around the world tweaked and added to geosynclinal theory, including
igneous activities such as intrusions. At the turn of the century, geosynclinal theory led the
field of tectophysics. Once it was well rooted, grown, and supported; it took over 50 years
to steadily chip through the tree that was geosynclinal theory with the axe of progression.
This is largely due to the fact that it was the first major geologic theory seeded in the
United States.
The geosynclinal theory deals only with the geosynclinal stage of the earth's crust
development. The important principles of the theory are :
1. The Presence of The Geosyncline (Geosynclinal System)
2. Mobility
3. The Inner Sources of Geosynclinal Deposits
4. Large gradients of the deposit of thickness variation;
5. Folding (Orogeny)
6. Increment to Continent (Consolidation).
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4.2 Plate Tectonic Theory


Plate tectonics is the theory that the outer rigid layer of the earth (the lithosphere) is
divided into a couple of dozen "plates" that move around across the earth's surface relative

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to each other, like slabs of ice on a lake.


The drawing above is a cross section of the earth showing the components that lie
within plate tectonic theory. The cross section should really be curved to correspond to the
earth's curvature, but it has been straightened out here.
Note the continental craton (stable continent) in the middle of the drawing. Note the
line under the craton; that is the lower boundary of the plate. Everything above that line is
the plate. All similar lines in the cross section mark the bottom of the plates. Technically,
everything above that line is lithosphere, the rigid, brittle shell of the earth. Everything
below is asthenosphere, the hot, plastic interior of the earth.
Within the asthenosphere are convection cells, slowly turning over hot, plastic rock.
The convection cells bring heat from the earth's interior out to the surface, but slowly.
Movement is about 10 centimeters a year. When the convection cells reach the base of the
lithosphere they release heat to the surface at the divergent plate boundary to escape to
space. The cooled plastic rock then turns sideways and moves parallel to the earth's surface
before descending back into the earth at subduction zones to become reheated. It is this
turning over of the convection cells the drives the plate movements.
The Plates
Simplistically, the earth consists of the plates, and plate boundaries, those zones where
the plates contact and interact. Observe that 7 different plates are labeled in the cross
section. Plates are combinations of two units, continents and ocean basins. A plate may be
an ocean basin alone, or a continent alone, or a combination of ocean basin+continent
(common).
It is possible a plate could be a continent alone, but for this to occur all edges of the
continent would have to be a plate boundary (very rare, perhaps not practically possible).
Note that in the cross section several different ocean basin/continent combinations are
present, but that it is difficult to get a continent with all plate boundaries.
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Plate Boundaries
The three kinds of plate boundaries are also illustrated in the cross section, divergent,
convergent, and transform. Plate interact at these boundaries. Two divergent margins (plate

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boundaries) are present in the cross section, one labeled as such to the right of the
continental craton, and the other on the left side. The left side divergent margin is labeled
Back Arc (Marginal) Basin. Back arc basins are formed by minor convection cells above
subduction zones. Divergent plate boundaries always create new ocean floor (that is, new
oceanic lithosphere, called the ophiolite suite).
Three convergent boundaries are present, all of them one way or another involving a
subduction zone. In the continent-continent collision the subduction zone is now extinct but
can be seen below the surface. Subduction zones generate lots of igneous magma that rises
to the surface to form volcanic mountains (volcanic arcs; also island arcs). The igneous
batholiths that feed the volcanoes are the beginning of generation of new continental crust.
Continents are created above subduction zones as small proto- and microcontinents. They
enlarge by colliding and fusing together, or suturing onto a larger continent, at a convergent
plate boundary.
At convergent boundaries oceanic lithosphere is always destroyed by descending into
a subduction zone. This is because oceanic rock is heavy, compared to the continents, and
sinks easily. Because oceanic lithosphere is created and destroyed so easily ocean basins are
young; the oldest we have is only about 200 million years old. Continents, on the other
hand, composed of light weight rock never subducts. Thus, continental rock once formed is
more or less permanent; the oldest continental fragment is 3.9 billion years old, virtually as
old as the earth itself.
Only one transform boundary is present, on the left side of the drawing. At transform
boundaries two plates just slide past one another horizontally, and quietly compared to
convergent and divergent plate boundaries. Most of these are found in the ocean basins, but
the San Andreas fault in California and Mexico is an example coming on land.
Plate Collisions
The essence of plate tectonic theory is that the plates (ocean basins plus or minus
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continents) slide around over the earth surface, interacting as they do at the plate
boundaries. Thus, any time there is a divergent plate boundary where two plates are
separating, there must be a convergent plate boundary (subduction zone) where the earth

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comes together again. And convergent boundaries always, eventually, lead to collisions
between continents, or continents and terranes (island arcs plus or minus microcontinents).
Observe the subduction zones in the cross section. Next to each one is a remnant ocean
basin (ROB). An ROB is one that is disappearing down a subduction zone; it is a remnant
of its former self. But all subduction zones must eventually disappear completely and when
they do the floating blocks on either side will collide, and create a mountain range. The
continent-continent collision in the cross section is a case where the collision has already
occurred.
But in the larger picture, it is common for a divergent plate boundary to come into
existence and create a new ocean basin, and then for that ocean basin to close again along a
convergent plate boundary until two continents collide. This opening and closing of ocean
basins is the Wilson Cycle, and is the simplest model we have of how the earth operates
historically.

4.3 Plate Tectonic Movement


There are a few handfuls of major plates and dozens of smaller, or minor, plates. Six of
the majors are named for the continents embedded within them, such as the North
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American, African, and Antarctic plates. Though smaller in size, the minors are no less
important when it comes to shaping the Earth. The tiny Juan de Fuca plate is largely
responsible for the volcanoes that dot the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

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The plates make up Earth's outer shell, called the lithosphere. (This includes the crust
and uppermost part of the mantle.) Churning currents in the molten rocks below propel
them along like a jumble of conveyor belts in disrepair. Most geologic activity stems from
the interplay where the plates meet or divide.
The movement of the plates creates three types of tectonic boundaries: convergent,
where plates move into one another; divergent, where plates move apart; and transform,
where plates move sideways in relation to each other.
a) Convergent Boundaries
Where plates serving landmasses collide, the crust crumples and buckles into
mountain ranges. India and Asia crashed about 55 million years ago, slowly giving rise to
the Himalaya, the highest mountain system on Earth. As the mash-up continues, the
mountains get higher. Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, may be a tiny bit taller
tomorrow than it is today.
These convergent boundaries also occur where a plate of ocean dives, in a process
called subduction, under a landmass. As the overlying plate lifts up, it also forms mountain
ranges. In addition, the diving plate melts and is often spewed out in volcanic eruptions
such as those that formed some of the mountains in the Andes of South America.
At ocean-ocean convergences, one plate usually dives beneath the other, forming deep
trenches like the Mariana Trench in the North Pacific Ocean, the deepest point on Earth.
These types of collisions can also lead to underwater volcanoes that eventually build up
into island arcs like Japan.
b)

Divergent Boundaries
At divergent boundaries in the oceans, magma from deep in the Earth's mantle rises

toward the surface and pushes apart two or more plates. Mountains and volcanoes rise
along the seam. The process renews the ocean floor and widens the giant basins. A single
mid-ocean ridge system connects the world's oceans, making the ridge the longest mountain
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range in the world.


On land, giant troughs such as the Great Rift Valley in Africa form where plates are
tugged apart. If the plates there continue to diverge, millions of years from now eastern

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Africa will split from the continent to form a new landmass. A mid-ocean ridge would then
mark the boundary between the plates.
c)

Transform Boundaries
The San Andreas Fault in California is an example of a transform boundary, where

two plates grind past each other along what are called strike-slip faults. These boundaries
don't produce spectacular features like mountains or oceans, but the halting motion often
triggers large earthquakes, such as the 1906 one that devastated San Francisco.
The Cause of Plate Movement
a) Mantle Convention
The widely accepted opinion regarding the cause of the plates move at this time is because
of the convection currents in the mantle. The heat from the core of the Earth is transferred
to the surface of the Earth through the mantle. The heat from the core warms up the liquid
rock on mantle that closest to the core, causing the liquid rock to expand and rise toward
the crust. The cooler liquid rock near the surface sinks back down toward the core. In doing
so, a current of liquid rock is set up flowing toward the surface and back down again. This
mantle convection is believed the causes the plates movement.
b)

Ridge Push

Ridge push or sliding plate force is a proposed mechanism for plate motion in plate
tectonics. When a plate moves away from a divergent boundary, it cools and thickens.
Cooling sea floor subsides as it moves, and this subsidence forms the broad side slopes of
the mid-ocean ridge. An even more important slope form on the base of the lithosphere
mantle. The mantle thickens as cooling converts asthenospheric mantle to lithospheric
mantle. Therefore, the boundary between them is a slope down which the lithosphere slides.
The oceanic plate is thought to slide down this slope at the base of lithosphere, which may
have a relief of 80 to 1000 kilometres.
c)

Slab Pull

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The other proposal is called slab pull. Cold lithosphere sinking at a steep angle through hot
mantle should pull the surface part of the plate away from the ridge crest and then down
into mantle as it cools. A subduction plate sinks because it is denser than the surrounding

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mantle. This density contrast is partly due to the fact that sinking lithosphere is cold. The
subduction plate may also increase its density while it sinks, as low-density materials such
as water are lost and as plate minerals collapse into denser form during subduction. Slab
pull is thought to be at least twice as important as ridge push in moving an oceanic plate
away from aridge crest. Slab pull causes rapid plate motion.
4.4 Mid Oceanic Ridge
Mid-ocean ridges are a series of largely
underwater mountain ranges that are present
beneath many seas of the world. Mid-ocean ridges
are topographic features found where divergent
tectonic plate processes are moving two pieces of
oceanic crust away from each other.
At the mid-ocean ridges, new ocean floor is
continuously being created from rising magma originating from the Earth's mantle. The
creation of the new oceanic crust pushes older crust away from the ridge in a conveyor belt
fashion. This process is known as sea-floor spreading. The fracture can be seen beneath the
ocean as a line of ridges that form as molten rock reaches the ocean bottom and solidifies.
A narrow depressed area running along the center of the ridges, called a rift, is the region
where volcanic activity is adding magma to the two diverging pieces of oceanic crust.
The mid-ocean ridges themselves are broken by offsets know as transform faults,
breaks in the Earth's crust which run perpendicular to the ridge. Transform faults are
formed by the pressure of the magma which forces the crust upward and breaks it into a
string of tilted blocks.
At nearly 60,000 kilometers (37,000 miles) long, the mid-ocean is the longest
mountain range on Earth. It formed and evolves as a result of spreading in Earths
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lithospherethe crust and upper mantleat the divergent boundaries between tectonic
plates. The vast majority of volcanic activity on the planet occurs along the mid-ocean
ridge, and it is the place where the crust of the Earth is born. The material that erupts at

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spreading centers along the mid-ocean ridge is primarily basalt, the most common rock on
Earth. Because this spreading occurs on a sphere, the rate separation along the mid-ocean
ridge varies around the globe. In places where spreading is fastest (more than 80
millimeters, or 3 inches, per year), the ridge has relatively gentle topography and is roughly
dome-shaped in cross-section as a result of the many layers of lava that build up over time.
At slow- and ultra-slow spreading centers, the ridge is much more rugged, and spreading is
dominated more by tectonic processes rather than volcanism.
Mid-ocean ridges are geologically important because they occur along the kind of
plate boundary where new ocean floor is created as the plates spread apart. Thus the midocean ridge is also known as a "spreading center" or a "divergent plate boundary." The
plates spread apart at rates of 1 cm to 20 cm per year. As oceanic plates move apart, rock
melts and wells up from tens of kilometers deep. Some of the molten rock ascends all the
way up to the seafloor, producing enormous volcanic eruptions of basalt, and building the
longest chain of volcanoes in the world! The molten rock that does not erupt freezes onto
the edges of the plates as they spread apart. In 1783, a segment of the ridge which emerges
above sea-level in Iceland erupted more than 12 cubic kilometers of lava- enough to pave
the entire U.S. interstate freeway system to a depth of 10 meters. The scorching lava
(~1200 C), as well as 50 million tons of sulfur dioxide released into the atmosphere, ruined
crops and caused the death of more than 10,000 Icelanders, a quarter of the nation's
population at the time.
Since most of the mid-ocean ridge is more than 2000 meters deep, most of its
eruptions go unnoticed. In fact, accurate maps along the mid-ocean ridge did not exist until
the last ten years, and even now much of it remains unmapped. Accurate maps that exist
along portions of the mid-ocean ridge show that the zone of recent volcanic activity is
narrow, less than 10 km and often less than 1 km wide. This region generating new ocean
floor is also characterized by many small to moderate earthquakes. Some of these
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earthquakes are caused by volcanic eruptions, and others are caused by breaking and
ripping of the thin, newly created plate as it spreads to either side of the ridge.
Two of the most carefully studied mid-ocean ridges are the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and

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the East Pacific Rise (called a rise because it has more gentle slopes). The Mid-Atlantic
Ridge runs down the center of the Atlantic Ocean. It spread apart at rates of 2 to 5 cm per
year, and at these relatively slow spreading rates, the ridge has a deep rift valley along its
crest. The rift valley is 1 to 3 km deep, about the depth and width of the Grand Canyon. In
contrast, the East Pacific Rise spreads fast at rates of 6 to 16 cm per year (more than 20 cm
per year in the past). Due to the fast spreading rates, there is no rift valley, just a smooth
volcanic summit with a crack along the crest that is much smaller than the Atlantic rift
valley. Every 50-500 km, the mid-ocean ridge is offset sideways right or left by transform
faults (found where two plates slide sideways against each other). The ridge also has many
smaller lateral offsets which, together with larger transform faults, divide the mid-ocean
ridge into many segments.
Along the crests of the volcanoes of the mid-ocean ridge, cracks allow the nearfreezing sea water to seep deep into the hot new crust. This water becomes superheated to
temperatures of greater than 400C (752 F), causing the water to become so buoyant it
shoots out of the seafloor at very high speeds, like water gushing from a broken fire
hydrant. This water, however, is not clear and looks like thick black smoke. The hot
"hydrothermal" water dissolves minerals out of the basalt crust and reacts with cold sea
water when coming back up to the seafloor. The black appearance is caused by precipitation
of tiny mineral particles in the plume of hot water as it gushes out of the seafloor. Chimneys
and mounds of minerals deposit very rapidly around these "black smoker" hydrothermal
vents. The main minerals are zinc-, copper-, and iron-sulfides (such as pyrite "fool's gold").
Sometimes there are traces of platinum, gold and silver, but usually not enough to make
these deposits economic since they are so deep.
The heat from the volcanoes and the hydrothermal vent waters provide the energy base
for a very unusual community of deep sea animals. These animals live completely
independent of sunlight, mining the energy of deep sea volcanoes. Instead of relying on
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floral (plant) use of the sun's energy to make organic material through photosynthesis, the
food chain relies on microbes able to oxidize hydrogen sulfide and other compounds in
hydrothermal vent waters, and convert large amounts of carbon dioxide in sea water into

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organic material through a process called chemosynthesis. The community consists of


hundreds of species, including clams, mussels, crabs, vent fish, octopus, and the very
unusual giant tube worms which grow as tall as 4 m. Conditions are hostile here; water
pressures reach 200-300 atmospheres (3000 to 4500 lb./sq. in.), it is pitch dark, and
volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur frequently.
Like the rest of the deep ocean floor, we have explored less of the mountains of the
mid-ocean ridge system than the surface of Venus or Mars, or the dark side of the moon.
Use of submersible or remotely operated vehicles to explore the mid-ocean ridge has
provided information on less than 0.1% of the mid-ocean ridge! Much of the mid-ocean
ridge still remains a mystery, and we will continue to explore it.
4.5 Earthquake Zones
Subduction zones are plate tectonic boundaries where
two plates converge, and one plate is thrust beneath the
other.

This process results in geohazards, such as

earthquakes and volcanoes. These hazards affect millions of


people around the world, particularly around the edges of
the Pacific Ocean, which mainly consist of subduction
zones. The largest earthquakes on Earth occur at the
interface between the two plates, called the megathrust. Recent examples include the
magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile in February 2010 and the magnitude 9.1 earthquake
offshore Sumatra in December 2004; the latter triggered a devastating tsunami.
Earthquakes are caused by movement over an area of the plate interface called the
seismogenic zone. This zone locks between earthquakes, such that stress builds up. It is
then released catastrophically in one or more earthquakes. Above and below this area on
the fault, stress cannot build up, and the movement between the plates occurs relatively
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smoothly through time, and thus does not produce large earthquakes. To improve our
estimates of the likely damage that would be associated with an earthquake in a given
location, we require better constraints on the size of the seismogenic zone, particularly the

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location of the lower limit.


Earths major earthquakes occur mainly in belts coinciding with the margins of
tectonic plates. This has long been apparent from early catalogs of felt earthquakes and is
even more readily discernible in modern seismicity maps, which show instrumentally
determined epicentres. The most important earthquake belt is the Circum-Pacific Belt,
which affects many populated coastal regions around the Pacific Oceanfor example,
those of New Zealand, New Guinea, Japan, the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and the western
coasts of North and South America. It is estimated that 80 percent of the energy presently
released in earthquakes comes from those whose epicentres are in this belt. The seismic
activity is by no means uniform throughout the belt, and there are a number of branches at
various points. Because at many places the Circum-Pacific Belt is associated with volcanic
activity, it has been popularly dubbed the Pacific Ring of Fire.
A second belt, known as the Alpide Belt, passes through the Mediterranean region
eastward through Asia and joins the Circum-Pacific Belt in the East Indies. The energy
released in earthquakes from this belt is about 15 percent of the world total. There also are
striking connected belts of seismic activity, mainly along oceanic ridgesincluding those
in the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the western Indian Oceanand along the rift
valleys of East Africa. This global seismicity distribution is best understood in terms of its
plate tectonic setting.
Earthquakes are caused by the sudden release of energy within some limited region of
the rocks of the Earth. The energy can be released by elastic strain, gravity, chemical
reactions, or even the motion of massive bodies. Of all these the release of elastic strain is
the most important cause, because this form of energy is the only kind that can be stored in
sufficient quantity in the Earth to produce major disturbances. Earthquakes associated with
this type of energy release are called tectonic earthquakes.
Tectonic earthquakes are explained by the so-called elastic rebound theory, formulated
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by the American geologist Harry Fielding Reid after the San Andreas Fault ruptured in
1906, generating the great San Francisco earthquake. According to the theory, a tectonic
earthquake occurs when strains in rock masses have accumulated to a point where the

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resulting stresses exceed the strength of the rocks, and sudden fracturing results. The
fractures propagate rapidly through the rock, usually tending in the same direction and
sometimes extending many kilometres along a local zone of weakness. In 1906, for
instance, the San Andreas Fault slipped along a plane 430 km (270 miles) long. Along this
line the ground was displaced horizontally as much as 6 metres (20 feet).
As a fault rupture progresses along or up the fault, rock masses are flung in opposite
directions and thus spring back to a position where there is less strain. At any one point this
movement may take place not at once but rather in irregular steps; these sudden slowings
and restartings give rise to the vibrations that propagate as seismic waves. Such irregular
properties of fault rupture are now included in the modeling of earthquake sources, both
physically and mathematically. Roughnesses along the fault are referred to as asperities,
and places where the rupture slows or stops are said to be fault barriers. Fault rupture starts
at the earthquake focus, a spot that in many cases is close to 515 km under the surface.
The rupture propagates in one or both directions over the fault plane until stopped or
slowed at a barrier. Sometimes, instead of being stopped at the barrier, the fault rupture
recommences on the far side; at other times the stresses in the rocks break the barrier, and
the rupture continues.
Earthquakes have different properties depending on the type of fault slip that causes
them (as shown in the figure). The usual fault model has a strike (that is, the direction
from north taken by a horizontal line in the fault plane) and a dip (the angle from the
horizontal shown by the steepest slope in the fault). The lower wall of an inclined fault is
called the footwall. Lying over the footwall is the hanging wall. When rock masses slip past
each other parallel to the strike, the movement is known as strike-slip faulting. Movement
parallel to the dip is called dip-slip faulting. Strike-slip faults are right lateral or left lateral,
depending on whether the block on the opposite side of the fault from an observer has
moved to the right or left. In dip-slip faults, if the hanging-wall block moves downward
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relative to the footwall block, it is called normal faulting; the opposite motion, with the
hanging wall moving upward relative to the footwall, produces reverse or thrust faulting.
All known faults are assumed to have been the seat of one or more earthquakes in the

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past, though tectonic movements along faults are often slow, and most geologically ancient
faults are now aseismic (that is, they no longer cause earthquakes). The actual faulting
associated with an earthquake may be complex, and it is often not clear whether in a
particular earthquake the total energy issues from a single fault plane.
Observed geologic faults sometimes show relative displacements on the order of
hundreds of kilometres over geologic time, whereas the sudden slip offsets that produce
seismic waves may range from only several centimetres to tens of metres. In the 1976
Tangshan earthquake, for example, a surface strike-slip of about one metre was observed
along the causative fault east of Beijing, and in the 1999 Taiwan earthquake the Chelung-pu
fault slipped up to eight metres vertically.
A separate type of earthquake is associated with volcanic activity and is called a
volcanic earthquake. Yet it is likely that even in such cases the disturbance is the result of a
sudden slip of rock masses adjacent to the volcano and the consequent release of elastic
strain energy. The stored energy, however, may in part be of hydrodynamic origin due to
heat provided by magma moving in reservoirs beneath the volcano or to the release of gas
under pressure.
There is a clear correspondence between the geographic distribution of volcanoes and
major earthquakes, particularly in the Circum-Pacific Belt and along oceanic ridges.
Volcanic vents, however, are generally several hundred kilometres from the epicentres of
most major shallow earthquakes, and many earthquake sources occur nowhere near active
volcanoes. Even in cases where an earthquakes focus occurs directly below structures
marked by volcanic vents, there is probably no immediate causal connection between the
two activities; most likely both are the result of the same tectonic processes.
4.6 The Correlation Between Basin and Plate Tectonics
One of the geologic events can be explained by the theory of plate tectonics was the
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formation of basin. Basin in geology is defined as a low area in the Earths crust, of tectonic
origin, in which sediments accumulate. Basins range in size from as small as hundreds of
meters to large parts of ocean basins.

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How basin can be created? On some cases with a small scale, fault movements can
create relief of hundreds to thousands of meters laterally, resulting in small but often deep
basins. But, the other main reason is because the continent rift. In plate tectonic theory, if
one of plates rifting into pieces diverging apart then new basins being born, followed by
motion reversal, convergence back together, plate collision, and mountain building.
Wilson Cycle
Wilson cycle is a cycle opening and closing an ocean basin. Wilson cycle begins with
a hypothetical geologically (tectonically) quiet continent. The model is divided into nine
stages, but the stages are arbitrary and do not exist naturally. Within the earth is an ongoing
series of processes and it is more important to understand these processes, how they are
related, and how one process leads to the next process.

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Stage A
The Wilson cycle begins in Stage A with a stable continental craton. A hot spot rises up
under the craton, heating it, causing it to swell upward, stretch and thin like taffy, crack, and
finally split into two pieces. This process not only splits a continent in two it also creates a
new divergent plate boundary.
Stage B
The one continent has been separated into two continents, east and west, and a new ocean
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basin (the Ophiolite Suite) is generated between them. The ocean basin in this stage is
comparable to the Red Sea today. As the ocean basin widens the stretched and thinned
edges where the two continents used to be joined cool, become denser, and sink below sea

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level. Wedges of divergent continental margins sediments accumulate on both new


continental edges.
Stage C
The ocean basin widens, sometimes to thousands of miles; this is comparable to the
Atlantic ocean today. As long as the ocean basin is opening we are still in the opening phase
of the Wilson cycle.
Stage D
The closing phase of the Wilson Cycle begins when a subduction zone (new convergent
plate boundary) forms. The subduction zone may form anywhere in the ocean basin, and
may face in any direction. In this model we take the simplest situation; a subduction zone
developing under the edge of one continent. Once the subduction zone is active the ocean
basin is doomed; it will all eventually subduct and disappear. These are remnant ocean
basins.
Stage E
Most of the remnant ocean basin has subducted and the two continents are about to collide.
Subduction under the edge of a continent has a lot of results. Deep in the subduction zone
igneous magma is generated and rises to the surface to form volcanoes, that build into a
cordilleran mountain range (e.g. the Cascade mountains of Washington, Oregon, and
northern California.) Also, a lot of metamorphism occurs and folding and faulting.
Stage F
The two continents, separated in Stages A and B now collide. The remnant ocean basin is
completely subducted. Technically the closing phase of the Wilson cycle is over. Because
the subduction zone acts as a ramp the continent with the subduction zone (a hinterland)
slides up over the edge of the continent without it (a foreland).
Stage G
Once the collision has occurred the only thing left for the mountain to do is erode down to
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sea level - a peneplain. The stage G drawing is a distortion, however. With the collision the
continental thickness doubles, and since continental rock is light weight, both will rise as
the mountain erodes, much like a boat rises when cargo is taken off of it. Thus, in reality,

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most of the hinterland continent will be eroded away, and the foreland continent will
eventually get back to the earth's surface again.
Basin Formation Method
Basins form primarily in convergent, divergent and transform settings. Convergent
boundaries create foreland basins through tectonic compression of oceanic and continental
crust during lithospheric flexure. Tectonic extension at divergent boundaries where
continental rifting is occurring can create a nascent ocean basin leading to either an ocean
or the failure of the rift zone. In tectonic strike-slip settings, accommodation spaces occur
as transpresional, transtensional or transrotational basins according to the motion of the
plates along the fault zone and the local topography pull-apart basins.
Lithospheric Stretching
If the lithosphere is caused to stretch horizontally, by mechanisms such as ridge-push
or trench-pull, the effect is believed to be two fold. The lower, hotter part of the lithosphere
will flow slowly away from the main area being stretched, whilst the upper, cooler and
more brittle crust will tend to fault and fracture. The combined effect of these two
mechanisms is for the Earth's surface in the area of extension to subside, creating a
geographical depression which is then often unfilled with water and/or sediments.
An example of a basin caused by lithospheric stretching is the North Sea - also an
important location for significant hydrocarbon reserves. Another such feature is the Basin
and Range province which covers most of the USA state of Nevada, forming a series of
horst and graben structures.
Another expression of lithospheric stretching results in the formation of ocean basins
with central ridges; The Red Sea is in fact an incipient ocean, in a plate tectonic context.
The mouth of the Red Sea is also a tectonic triple junction where the Indian Ocean Ridge,
Red Sea Rift and East African Rift meet. This is the only place on the planet where such a
triple junction in oceanic crust is exposed sub-aerially. The reason for this is twofold, due to
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a high thermal buoyancy of the junction, and a local crumpled zone of seafloor crust acting
as a dam against the Red Sea.
Lithospheric Compression or Shortening and Flexure

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If a load is placed on the lithosphere, it will tend to flex in the manner of an elastic
plate. The magnitude of the lithospheric flexure is a function of the imposed load and the
flexural rigidity of the lithosphere, and the wavelength of flexure is a function of flexural
rigidity alone. Flexural rigidity is in itself, a function of the lithospheric mineral
composition, thermal regime, and effective elastic thickness. The nature of the load is
varied. For instance, the Hawaiian Islands chain of volcanic edifices has sufficient mass to
cause deflection in the lithosphere.
The obduction of one tectonic plate onto another also causes a load and often results in
the creation of a foreland basin, such as the Po basin next to the Alps in Italy, the Molasse
Basin next to the Alps in Germany, or the Ebro basin next to the Pyrenees in Spain.
Strike-Slip deformation
Deformation of the lithosphere in the plane of the earth occurs as a result of near
horizontal maximum and minimum principal stresses. The resulting zones of subsidence are
known as strike-slip or pull apart basins. Basins formed through strike-slip action occur
where a vertical fault plane curves. When the curve in the fault plane moves apart, a region
of transtension results, creating a basin. Another term for a transtensional basin is a
rhombochasm. A classic rhombochasm is illustrated by the Dead Sea rift, where northward
movement of the Arabian Plate relative to the Anatolian Plate has caused a rhombochasm.
The opposite effect is that of transpression, where converging movement of a curved
fault plane causes collision of the opposing sides of the fault. An example is the San
Bernardino Mountains north of Los Angeles, which result from convergence along a curve
in the San Andreas Fault system. The Northridge earthquake was caused by vertical
movement along local thrust and reverse faults bunching up against the bend in the
otherwise strike-slip fault environment. In Nigeria, the dominant type of basement rock
intersected by wells drilled for hydrocarbons, limestone, or water is granite. The three
sedimentary basins in Nigeria are underlain by continental crust except in the Niger delta,
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where the basement rock is interpreted to be oceanic crust. Most of the wells that penetrated
the basement are in the Eastern Dahomey embayment of western Nigeria. A maximum
thickness of about 12,000 m of sedimentary rocks is attained in the offshore western Niger

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delta, but maximum thicknesses of sedimentary rocks are about 2,000 m in the Chad basin
and only 500 m in the Sokoto embayment.

CHAPTER V
The Origin of The Earth
5.1 The Origin of The Universe
Scientific Origins of the Universe
Black Holes
It has happened more than once in the history of science that because of the fame of an
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individual's
contribution, theory, or breakthrough in some area of science, they push their

views over those of other lesser-known individuals. This happens regardless of the
correctness of their explanation. Isaac Newton refused to listen to rebuttals against some of

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his ideas, as did Neils Bohr and even Albert Einstein. Somewhere along the way, the search
for truth in science gets lost in the person identifying with the truth of their ideas.
As far back as recorded history goes, there have been two sets of opposing ideas,
beliefs, theories, or teachings about the origin of the universe. It has either existed eternally
with no beginning or end, or it was created at some point in time and will eventually come
to an end. In the first part we examined the early cultural, religious, and somewhat
philosophical views of how the universe began. We've also spent a little time looking at
some ideas about our own beginnings from a religious and scientific point of view. In this
section, we're going to take a brief excursion through the various theories that science has
put forth to explain the origin of the universe.
By far the most popular theory in science today is the big bang theory, the idea that the
universe came into existence at a certain point in time roughly 15 to 20 billion years ago. In
the last 25 years this theory has moved to the forefront of cosmology. You'll meet some of
the key figures whose theories have laid the foundation for the big bang. However, as you'll
see as we move through this section, this theory is not only a product of science but also of
the times in which we live. And although science would like to consider itself removed
from outside influences, it can't help but be affected by the people who work in the field.
The Cosmological Pendulum
Universal Constants
Zeitgeist is a German word that means literally the spirit of the times. It can also
refer to a trend of thought and feeling during a period. It describes the general mood of a
culture or society based on one or many influences coming from science, religion, art,
politics, or even economics.
I don't think I have to reiterate for you again the two major ways in which the study of
cosmology can be approached, I'm sure you remember what they are. In our present day,
these two methods have manifested, and in some cases crystallized into two distinct areas
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of science: experimentation and mathematical theory. Theorists often have nothing to do


with actual experimentation and the same can be said of experimenters. And it is this
distinction that has been a source of disagreement between various scientific groups who

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put forth one view of the origin of the universe over another. To see exactly what I'm
talking about, let's trace the development of the big bang theory through its various stages.
Along the way you'll get a chance to meet an opposing theory, and examine some of the
reasons why the big bang was developed in the first place.
Science as a methodology likes to see itself as a revealer of the true nature of the
universe, as sort of a seer that can look beneath the veil of appearance. Yet science is
practiced by scientists, human beings who bring with themselves a whole set of
predispositions, values and beliefs. And as in any cross section of our society, some will be
seriously invested in their positions and viewpoints, taking themselves rather seriously and
purporting the correctness of their views. Of course, there are as many who don't take this
stance and seek to move beyond any personal attachment to who they are and what they've
discovered.
Universal Constants
Ex nihilo is a Latin term that translated means out of nothing. It was an idea
presented by St. Augustine that became Church doctrine later on. It is his philosophical
explanation of how God created everything out of nothing, which interestingly enough can
be applied to the big bang as well. Where did everything contained in the big bang come
from and why did it bang in the first place?
Much of the history of cosmology and its theories are a reflection of these types of
people and the cultures they lived in. Often the most widely accepted theory becomes
exactly that, because of the forceful personality behind the ideas. And while science tries to
remain free of influence from things outside of it, the scientists who practice it are still a
product of the culture and the times in which they live. In other words, in relation to the
theories in cosmology, whether the universe has always existed or began with a bang, can't
be separated from the influence of the zeitgeist, or spirit of the times. While there isn't
enough time to go back through history in detail and show you how the cosmological
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pendulum has swung from one theory to the other, I can give you a rough outline and a few
examples of some time periods in which this occurred. Just remember that there are always
many factors impacting how any specific paradigm develops.

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5.2 Solar System Planets

Terrestrial planets
The inner four worlds are called terrestrial planets, because, like Earth, their

surfaces are all rocky. Pluto, too, has a solid surface (and a very frozen one) but has never
been grouped with the four terrestrials.

Jovian planets
The four large outer worlds Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are known as

the Jovian planets (meaning Jupiter-like) because they are all huge compared to the
terrestrial planets, and because they are gaseous in nature rather than having rocky surfaces
(though some or all of them may have solid cores, astronomers say). According to NASA,
"two of the outer planets beyond the orbit of Mars Jupiter and Saturn are known as
gas giants; the more distant Uranus and Neptune are called ice giants." This is because,
while the first two are dominated by gas, while the last two have more ice. All four contain
mostly hydrogen and helium.

Dwarf planets
The new IAU definition of a full-fledged planet goes like this: A body that circles the

sun without being some other object's satellite, is large enough to be rounded by its own
gravity (but not so big that it begins to undergo nuclear fusion, like a star) and has "cleared
its neighborhood" of most other orbiting bodies. Yeah, thats a mouthful.
The problem for Pluto, besides its small size and offbeat orbit, is that it shares its space
with lots of other objects in the Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune. Still, the demotion of Pluto
remains controversial. The IAU planet definition puts other small, round worlds in the
dwarf planet category, including the Kuiper Belt objects Eris, Haumea, and Makemake.
Also now a dwarf planet is Ceres, a round object in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and
Jupiter. Ceres was actually considered a planet when discovered in 1801 and then later
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deemed to be an asteroid. Some astronomers like to consider Ceres as a 10th planet (not to
be confused with Nibiru or Planet X), but that line of thinking opens up the possibility of
there being 13 planets, with more bound to be discovered.

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The Planets

Below is a brief overview of the eight primary planets in our solar system, in order from the
inner solar system outward :
1. Mercury
The closest planet to the sun, Mercury is only a bit larger than Earth's moon. Its day
side is scorched by the sun and can reach 840 degrees Fahrenheit (450 Celsius), but on the
night side, temperatures drop to hundreds of degrees below freezing. Mercury has virtually
no atmosphere to absorb meteor impacts, so its surface is pockmarked with craters, just like
the moon. Over its four-year mission, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has revealed
views of the planet that have challenged astronomers' expectations.
Diameter

: 3,031 miles (4,878 km)

Orbit

: 88 Earth days

Day

: 58.6 Earth days

2. Venus
The second planet from the sun, Venus is terribly hot, even hotter than Mercury. The
atmosphere is toxic. The pressure at the surface would crush and kill you. Scientists
describe Venus situation as a runaway greenhouse effect. Its size and structure are similar
to Earth, Venus' thick, toxic atmosphere traps heat in a runaway "greenhouse effect." Oddly,
Venus spins slowly in the opposite direction of most planets. The Greeks believed Venus
was two different objects one in the morning sky and another in the evening. Because it
is often brighter than any other object in the sky except for the sun and moon Venus
has generated many UFO reports.
Diameter

: 7,521 miles (12,104 km)

Orbit

: 225 Earth days

Day

: 241 Earth days

3. Earth
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The third planet from the sun, Earth is a waterworld, with two-thirds of the planet

covered by ocean. Its the only world known to harbor life. Earths atmosphere is rich in
life-sustaining nitrogen and oxygen. Earth's surface rotates about its axis at 1,532 feet per

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second (467 meters per second) slightly more than 1,000 mph (1,600 kph) at the
equator. The planet zips around the sun at more than 18 miles per second (29 km per
second).
Diameter

: 7,926 miles (12,760 km)

Orbit

: 365.24 days

Day

: 23 hours, 56 minutes

4. Mars
The fourth planet from the sun, is a cold, dusty place. The dust, an iron oxide, gives
the planet its reddish cast. Mars shares similarities with Earth: It is rocky, has mountains
and valleys, and storm systems ranging from localized tornado-like dust devils to planetengulfing dust storms. It snows on Mars. And Mars harbors water ice. Scientists think it
was once wet and warm, though today its cold and desert-like.
Mars' atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist on the surface for any length of
time. Scientists think ancient Mars would have had the conditions to support life, and there
is hope that signs of past life possibly even present biology may exist on the Red
Planet.
Diameter

: 4,217 miles (6,787 km)

Orbit

: 687 Earth days

Day

: Just more than one Earth day (24 hours, 37 minutes)

5. Jupiter
The fifth planet from the sun, Jupiter is huge and is the most massive planet in our
solar system. Its a mostly gaseous world, mostly hydrogen and helium. Its swirling clouds
are colorful due to different types of trace gases. A big feature is the Great Red Spot, a giant
storm which has raged for hundreds of years. Jupiter has a strong magnetic field, and with
dozens of moons, it looks a bit like a miniature solar system.
Diameter

: 88,730 miles (428,400 km)

Orbit

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: 11.9 Earth years

Day

: 9.8 Earth hours

6. Saturn

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The sixth planet from the sun is known most for its rings. When Galileo Galilei first
studied Saturn in the early 1600s, he thought it was an object with three parts. Not knowing
he was seeing a planet with rings, the stumped astronomer entered a small drawing a
symbol with one large circle and two smaller ones in his notebook, as a noun in a
sentence describing his discovery. More than 40 years later, Christiaan Huygens proposed
that they were rings. The rings are made of ice and rock. Scientists are not yet sure how
they formed. The gaseous planet is mostly hydrogen and helium. It has numerous moons.
Diameter

: 74,900 miles (120,500 km)

Orbit

: 29.5 Earth years

Day

: About 10.5 Earth hours

7. Uranus
The seventh planet from the sun, Uranus is an oddball. Its the only giant planet whose
equator is nearly at right angles to its orbit it basically orbits on its side. Astronomers
think the planet collided with some other planet-size object long ago, causing the tilt. The
tilt causes extreme seasons that last 20-plus years, and the sun beats down on one pole or
the other for 84 Earth-years. Uranus is about the same size as Neptune. Methane in the
atmosphere gives Uranus its blue-green tint. It has numerous moons and faint rings.
Diameter

: 31,763 miles (51,120 km)

Orbit

: 84 Earth years

Day

: 18 Earth hours

8. Neptune
The eighth planet from the sun, Neptune is known for strong winds sometimes
faster than the speed of sound. Neptune is far out and cold. The planet is more than 30
times as far from the sun as Earth. It has a rocky core. Neptune was the first planet to be
predicted to exist by using math, before it was detected. Irregularities in the orbit of Uranus
led French astronomer Alexis Bouvard to suggest some other might be exerting a
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gravitational tug. German astronomer Johann Galle used calculations to help find Neptune
in a telescope. Neptune is about 17 times as massive as Earth.
Diameter

: 30,775 miles (49,530 km)

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Orbit

: 165 Earth years

Day

: 19 Earth hours

9. Pluto (Dwarf Planet)


Once the ninth planet from the sun, Pluto is unlike other planets in many respects. It is
smaller than Earth's moon. Its orbit carries it inside the orbit of Neptune and then way out
beyond that orbit. From 1979 until early 1999, Pluto had actually been the eighth planet
from the sun. Then, on Feb. 11, 1999, it crossed Neptune's path and once again became the
solar system's most distant planet until it was demoted to dwarf planet status. Pluto will
stay beyond Neptune for 228 years. Plutos orbit is tilted to the main plane of the solar
system where the other planets orbit by 17.1 degrees. Its a cold, rocky world with
only a very ephemeral atmosphere. NASA's New Horizons mission performed history's
first flyby of the Pluto system on July 14, 2015.
Diameter

: 1,430 miles (2,301 km)

Orbit

: 248 Earth years

Day

: 6.4 Earth day

5.3 The Composition of The Earths Crust


The crust is relatively thin and has probably been recycled and destroyed by strong
tectonic movements and impacts of asteroids that were common in the early solar system.
The crust is located at the top of the lithosphere with a thickness of 3 km (2 miles) and up
to 100 km (60 miles). The average density in the upper crust is between 2.69 tons/m3 and
2.74 tons/m3 and the lower crust between 3 and 3.2 tons/m3.
The age of the oldest oceanic crust in the sea is 200 million years old while the oldest
continental rocks have been identified in a range between 3.7 and 4.3 billion years found in
Australia and Canada formed in the Archaic period, so that estimated that the average age
of the continental crust is about 2 billion years.
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The Earths crust is composed of a variety of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary

rocks like basalts and granites although on average can be said to be composed of a
material similar to the andesite (volcanic extrusive igneous rock with about 60% of

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dioxides of silicon SiO2 and other minerals) and is enriched with incompatible elements
with basaltic or volcanic ocean compared to the mantle.
Regarding elements, the crust is made of oxygen-O (45%), silicon-Si (27%),
aluminum-Al (8%), iron Fe (6%), calcium-Ca (5%) , sodium-Na (3%), potassium-K (2%),
magnesium (3%), titanium (1%) totaling 98.9% of the crust and other scarce elements.

Regarding compounds it is estimated that the surface of the crust has a composition of
61% silicon oxide (SiO2), 16% aluminum oxide (Al2O2), 7% iron oxide (FeO), 6%
calcium oxide (CaO), 5% magnesium oxide (MgO), 3% sodium oxide (Na2O), 2%
potassium oxide (K2O) and 1% titanium oxide (TiO2).
The temperature of the crust increases with depth reaching values of up to 200 C and
400 C at the edge of the upper mantle. The temperature rises to 30 C for each kilometer
of depth on the crust.

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5.4 Geosyncline
Geosyncline, linear trough of subsidence of the Earths crust within which vast
amounts of sediment accumulate. The filling of a geosyncline with thousands or tens of
thousands of feet of sediment is accompanied in the late stages of deposition by folding,
crumpling, and faulting of the deposits. Intrusion of crystalline igneous rock and regional
uplift along the axis of the trough generally complete the history of a particular
geosyncline, which is thus transformed to a belt of folded mountains. The concept of the
geosyncline was introduced by the American geologist James Hall in 1859. Most modern
geologists regard the concept as obsolete and largely explain the development of linear
troughs in terms of plate tectonics; the term geosyncline, however, remains in use.
Two segments of a geosyncline are recognizable in the rock strata of many of the
worlds mountain systems today. Thick volcanic sequences, together with graywackes
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(sandstones rich in rock fragments with a muddy matrix), cherts, and various sediments
reflecting deepwater deposition or processes, were deposited in eugeosynclines, the outer,
deepwater segment of geosynclines. The occurrence of limestones and well-sorted

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quartzose sandstones, on the other hand, is considered to be evidence of shallow-water


formation, and such rocks form in the inner segment of a geosyncline, termed a
miogeosyncline.
Aside from the parts or segments of a geosyncline, several types of mobile zones have
been recognized and named. Among the more common of these are the taphrogeosyncline,
a depressed block of the Earths crust that is bounded by one or more high-angle faults and
that serves as a site of sediment accumulation, and the paraliageosyncline, a deep
geosyncline that passes into coastal plains along continental margins.

The diagram above is adapted from a classic 1948 book by Marshall Kay called North
American Geosynclines. It shows an imagined cross-section across the northern
Appalachians prior to the Appalachian Orogeny.
5.5 Tectonic Plates
Plate tectonics is the framework in which geologists study and understand the inner
workings of the earth. It provides us with a way to tie together what once was considered
unrelated geologic processes and events. Consider the origin of the ocean basins, shifting
position of the continents, where volcanoes erupt, where earthquakes happen, and why
mountain ranges are found where they are; all of them are explained by plate tectonics.
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The name itself is derived from the terms for two important components of the model.

The term plate refers to the large pieces of the earth's lithosphere that are in constant
motion; you may see them referred to as lithospheric plates. Tectonics is the branch of

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geology dealing with how continents form, change, and move over time, plus the study of
mountain-building episodes.
A Broken Lithosphere
The fundamental units of plate tectonics are large pieces of Earth's lithosphere, the
outermost rocky layer of the planet that is composed of the Earth's crust and the upper 50 to
80 miles of the next-lower layer, the mantle. The lithosphere is not a uniform mass of rocks.
There are differences in chemical composition (the rock types or the minerals they contain),
that result in a broad categorization of the layer as either continental or seafloor lithosphere.
Regardless of their composition, the rocks making up the lithosphere have a common
physical property in that they are relatively rigid and brittle solids.
Just below the lithosphere is another layer of rocks called the asthenosphere. Those
rocks are very hot and under a lot a pressure due to the weight of the rocks above. Those
conditions allow the rocks to deform, or change shape, rather easily. In fact, even though
they are solid, they can actually flow like a very viscous liquid. Hot asthenosphere rocks,
rising through the mantle and pushing up on the lithosphere, have caused it to fragment into
about a dozen large plates and several small ones.
A plate boundary is what we call the edge of a plate where it is in contact with an
adjacent plate. Along these boundaries, plates are in constant motion, either away from,
towards, or past each other. We know the plates are moving. The first formal description
was presented by Alfred Wegener in 1912. But it was not until after World War II that
geologists had collected the evidence for why they moved. It took time, because until
relatively recently, we lacked the ability to actually measure the movement. All of the
evidence was somewhat circumstantial: the presence of identical fossil species on widely
separated continents; the age of the ocean basins and continents; the pattern of magnetism
preserved in seafloor rocks. But all of it added up to one undeniable conclusion that the
plates were in motion.
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5.6 Plume Theory


Mantle plume is the name given to buoyant material that rises from depth in the Earth
through the mantle in a narrow conduit. This material melts, and produces volcanoes at the

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Earths surface which take on a linear geometry if a tectonic plate is moving overhead- like
a linear row of oozing pimples. Seismologists, geophysicists, experimental petrologists, and
analytical geochemists alike have invested serious time and money trying to solve the
mystery that is the mantle plume.
A mantle plume is a mechanism proposed in 1971 to explain volcanic regions of the
earth that were not thought to be explicable by the then-new theory of plate tectonics. Some
such volcanic regions lie far from tectonic plate boundaries, for example, Hawaii. Others
represent unusually large-volume volcanism, whether on plate boundaries, e.g. Iceland, or
basalt floods such as the Deccan or Siberian traps. A mantle plume is posited to exist where
hot rock nucleates at the core-mantle boundary and rises through the Earth's mantle
becoming a diapir in the Earth's crust. The currently active volcanic centers are known as
"hot spots". In particular, the concept that mantle plumes are fixed relative to one another,
and anchored at the core-mantle boundary, was thought to provide a natural explanation for
the time-progressive chains of older volcanoes seen extending out from some such hot
spots, such as the HawaiianEmperor seamount chain.
The hypothesis of mantle plumes from depth is not universally accepted as explaining
all such volcanism. It has required progressive hypothesis-elaboration leading to variant
propositions such as mini-plumes and pulsing plumes. Another hypothesis for unusual
volcanic regions is the "Plate model". This proposes shallower, passive leakage of magma
from the mantle onto the Earth's surface where extension of the lithosphere permits it,
attributing most volcanism to plate tectonic processes, with volcanoes far from plate
boundaries resulting from intraplate extension
These mysterious volcanoes are known by many different names, depending on who you
talk to, including :
Hotspots
Wetspots
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Ocean Island Basalts (OIB)


Or vaguely: melting anomalies
Many appear to start at different mantle depths, have different isotopic trace element

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signatures, and even highly variable major element signatures. They all have different
volume fluxes, uplift and subsidence rates, some form tracks while others dont; some have
flood basalts whereas others dont. In general though, they all tend to be located around
Africa or the Pacific Ocean. Some well-known hotspots include :
Hawaii
Iceland
Reunion
Yellowstone
Samoa
Kerguelen
Ascension
Cape Verde
Canary Islands
Easter Island
5.7 Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of
our universe. Discoveries in astronomy and physics have shown beyond a reasonable doubt
that our universe did in fact have a beginning. Prior to that moment there was nothing;
during and after that moment there was something: our universe. The big bang theory is an
effort to explain what happened during and after that moment.
The Big Bang Theory is the leading explanation about how the universe began. At its
simplest, it talks about the universe as we know it starting with a small singularity, then
inflating over the next 13.7 billion years to the cosmos that we know today.
According to the standard theory, our universe sprang into existence as "singularity"
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around
13.7 billion years ago. What is a "singularity" and where does it come from? Well,

to be honest, we don't know for sure. Singularities are zones which defy our current
understanding of physics. They are thought to exist at the core of "black holes." Black holes

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are areas of intense gravitational pressure. The pressure is thought to be so intense that
finite matter is actually squished into infinite density (a mathematical concept which truly
boggles the mind). These zones of infinite density are called "singularities." Our universe is
thought to have begun as an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense, something
- a singularity.
After its initial appearance, it apparently inflated (the "Big Bang"), expanded and
cooled, going from very, very small and very, very hot, to the size and temperature of our
current universe. It continues to expand and cool to this day and we are inside of it:
incredible creatures living on a unique planet, circling a beautiful star clustered together
with several hundred billion other stars in a galaxy soaring through the cosmos, all of which
is inside of an expanding universe that began as an infinitesimal singularity which appeared
out of nowhere for reasons unknown. This is the Big Bang theory.
Big Bang Theory - Common Misconceptions
There are many misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang theory. For example, we
tend to imagine a giant explosion. Experts however say that there was no explosion; there
was (and continues to be) an expansion. Rather than imagining a balloon popping and
releasing its contents, imagine a balloon expanding: an infinitesimally small balloon
expanding to the size of our current universe.
Another misconception is that we tend to image the singularity as a little fireball
appearing somewhere in space. According to the many experts however, space didn't exist
prior to the Big Bang. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the
moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose
turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions
of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory
of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space. According to their
calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter
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and energy. The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the
singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy nothing.

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The Major Evidences Which Support The Big Bang Theory :


First of all, we are reasonably certain that the universe had a beginning.
Second, galaxies appear to be moving away from us at speeds proportional to their
distance. This is called "Hubble's Law," named after Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) who
discovered this phenomenon in 1929. This observation supports the expansion of the
universe and suggests that the universe was once compacted.
Third, if the universe was initially very, very hot as the Big Bang suggests, we should
be able to find some remnant of this heat. In 1965, Radioastronomers Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson discovered a 2.725 degree Kelvin (-454.765 degree Fahrenheit,
-270.425 degree Celsius) Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) which
pervades the observable universe. This is thought to be the remnant which scientists
were looking for. Penzias and Wilson shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for
their discovery.
Finally, the abundance of the "light elements" Hydrogen and Helium found in the
observable universe are thought to support the Big Bang model of origins.
In 2003, Physicist Robert Gentry proposed an attractive alternative to the standard
theory, an alternative which also accounts for the evidences listed above. 5 Dr. Gentry claims
that the standard Big Bang model is founded upon a faulty paradigm (the Friedmannlemaitre expanding-spacetime paradigm) which he claims is inconsistent with the empirical
data. He chooses instead to base his model on Einstein's static-spacetime paradigm which
he claims is the "genuine cosmic Rosetta." Gentry has published several papers outlining
what he considers to be serious flaws in the standard Big Bang model. 6 Other high-profile
dissenters include Nobel laureate Dr. Hannes Alfvn, Professor Geoffrey Burbidge, Dr.
Halton Arp, and the renowned British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who is accredited with
first coining the term "the Big Bang" during a BBC radio broadcast in 1950.
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CHAPTER VI
Precambrian
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6.1 Common Information


Precambrian time covers the vast bulk of the Earth's history, starting with the planet's
creation about 4.5 billion years ago and ending with the emergence of complex, multicelled
life-forms almost four billion years later.
The Precambrian is the earliest of the geologic ages, which are marked by different
layers of sedimentary rock. Laid down over millions of years, these rock layers contain a
permanent record of the Earth's past, including the fossilized remains of plants and animals
buried when the sediments were formed.
The Earth was already more than 600 million years old when life began. The planet
had cooled down from its original molten state, developing a solid crust and oceans created
from water vapor in the atmosphere. Many scientists think these primordial seas gave rise
to life, with hot, mineral-rich volcanic vents acting as catalysts for chemical reactions
across the surface of tiny water bubbles, which led to the first cell membranes. Other
bubbles are thought to have formed self-replicating substances by attracting chemicals from
around them. Over time the two combined to produce energy-using, living cells.
The earliest living organisms were microscopic bacteria, which show up in the fossil
record as early as 3.4 billion years ago. As their numbers multiplied and supplies of their
chemical fuel were eaten up, bacteria sought out an alternative energy source. New varieties
began to harness the power of the sun through a biochemical process known as
photosynthesisa move that would ultimately lead to simple plants and which opened the
planet up to animal life.
Some three billion years ago the Earth's atmosphere was virtually devoid of oxygen.
At about 2.4 billion years ago, oxygen was released from the seas as a byproduct of
photosynthesis by cyanobacteria. Levels of the gas gradually climbed, reaching about one
percent around two billion years ago. About 800 million years ago, oxygen levels reached
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about 21 percent and began to breathe life into more complex organisms. The oxygen-rich
ozone layer was also established, shielding the Earth's surface from harmful solar radiation.

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6.2 The Classification of Precambrian


The Precambrian Era comprises all of geologic time prior to 600 million years ago.
The Precambrian was originally defined as the era that predated the emergence of life in the
Cambrian Period. It is now known, however, that life on Earth began by the early Archean
and that fossilized organisms became more and more abundant throughout Precambrian
time.
The two major subdivisions of the last part of the Precambrian are the Archean (oldest)
and the Proterozoic. Rocks younger than 600 Ma are considered part of the Phanerozoic.
The Precambrian Time-Scale
eon

era
Neoproterozoic NP

Proterozoic PR

Mesoproterozoic MP

Paleoproterozoic PP

Archean AR

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Hadean

period

end - began (Mya)

Ediacaran NP3

540 - 650

Cryogenian NP2

650 - 850

Tonian NP1

850 - 1000

Stenian MP3

1000 - 1200

Ectasian MP2

1200 - 1400

Calymmian MP1

1400 - 1600

Statherian PP4

1600 - 1800

Orosirian PP3

1800 - 2050

Rhyacian PP2

2050 - 2300

Siderian PP1

2300 - 2500

Neoarchean NA

2500 - 2800

Mesoarchean MA

2800 - 3200

Paleoarchean PA

3200 - 3600

Eoarchean EA

3600 -3800?

Early Imbrian

3800-3850

Nectarian

3850-3950

Basin Groups 1-9

3950-4150

Cryptic

4150- c. 4560

Hadean Eon

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The Hadean Eon occurred 4.6 billion to 4 billion years ago. It is named for the
mythological Hades, an allusion to the probable conditions of this time. During Hadean
time, the solar system was forming within a cloud of dust and gas known as the solar
nebula, which eventually spawned asteroids, comets, moons and planets.
Astrogeophysicists theorize that about 4.52 billion years ago the proto-Earth collided
with a Mars-size planetoid named Theia. The collision added about 10 percent to Earths
mass. Debris from this collision coalesced to form Earths moon. It is hypothesized that
Theias iron core sank to the center of the still molten Earth, giving this planets core
enough density to begin to cool. Lighter elements floating on the surface began to form a
scum of crustal materials. This early crust was frequently turned and subsumed by the
molten interior. There are few terrestrial rocks from Hadean time, just a few mineral
fragments found in sandstone substrates in Australia. However, study of lunar formations
shows that the Earth/moon system continued to be bombarded by frequent asteroid
collisions throughout the Hadean.

Archean Eon
Between 4 billion and 2.5 billion years ago, the continental shield rock began to form.

Approximately 70 percent of continental landmass was formed during this time. Small
island land masses floated in the molten seas. Earth had acquired enough mass to hold
a reducing atmosphere composed of methane, ammonia and other gases. Water from
comets and hydrated minerals condensed in the atmosphere and fell as torrential rain,
cooling the planet and filling the first oceans with liquid water.
Exactly when or how it happened is unknown, but microfossils of this time indicate
that life began in the oceans about 3.5 billion to 2.8 billion years ago. It is probable that
these microscopic prokaryotes began as chemoautotrophs, anaerobic bacteria able to obtain
carbon from carbon dioxide (CO2). By the end of the Archean, the ocean floor was covered
in a living mat of bacterial life.
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Proterozoic Eon
The Proterozoic Eon is also called the Cryptozoic ("age of hidden life"). About 2.5

billion years ago, enough shield rock had formed to start recognizable geologic processes

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such as plate tectonics. Geology was about to be joined by biology to continue Earths
progress from a molten hell to a living planet. It is generally accepted that different types of
prokaryotic organisms formed symbiotic relationships. Some types, more efficient at
converting energy, were engulfed by larger protective bubbles able to shield them from
the harsh environment. As time went on the symbiotic relationship became permanent and
the energy conversion components became the chloroplasts and mitochondria of the first
eukaryotic cells. Microfossils of these early cells are called Acritarchs.
About 1.2 billion years ago, plate tectonics forced the available shield rock to collide,
forming Rodinia (a Russian term meaning mother land), Earths first super continent.
Rodinias coastal waters were filled with rounded colonies of photosynthetic algae known
as stromatolites. Photosynthesis began to add oxygen to the atmosphere, putting pressure on
organisms adapted to the reduction atmosphere of the early Earth.
After a brief ice age in the mid-Proterozoic, organisms underwent rapid differentiation.
The Ediacaran Period , the last of the Proterozoic Era, saw the first multicellular organisms.
Autotrophs and soft-bodied heterotrophs filled the continental shelf regions around
Rodinia. Many were Cnidarians similar to small jellyfish with radial body symmetry and
specialized cells to sting prey and convey it into the body cavity. Fossils show that
significantly different populations inhabited different localities. Some benthic (sea bottomdwelling) organisms used a muscular foot to cling to the ocean bottom similar to the
modern sea pen. Kimbrella fossils show a clear anterior/posterior axis, bilateral body
symmetry and some indications they could crawl. Some scientists classify them as being
related to the mollusks.
The boundary between the Ediacaran Period of the Proterozoic Era and the Cambrian
Period of the Paleozoic Era is not as clear-cut as it was once thought to be. It used to be
thought that increasing oxygenation caused a mass extinction of Ediacaran forms and a
geologically sudden proliferation of new complex forms. Now it is understood that there
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were many complex multicellular animals capable of living in the higher oxygen of the
Ediacaran environment. However they were nearly all soft-bodied forms, which left few
fossil traces behind for us to find. The relative abundance of Cambrian fossils represents an

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increase in animals with calcified body parts, which were easily fossilized, not a mass
extinction of Ediacaran life as was once thought.
6.3 The Precambrian Records and The Evidence
The first multicelled animals appeared in the fossil record almost 600 million years
ago. Known as the Ediacarans, these bizarre creatures bore little resemblance to modern
life-forms. They grew on the seabed and lacked any obvious heads, mouths, or digestive
organs. Fossils of the largest known among them, Dickinsonia, resemble a ribbed doormat.
What happened to the mysterious Ediacarans isn't clear. They could be the ancestors of later
animals, or they may have been completely erased by extinction.
The earliest multicelled animals that survived the Precambrian fall into three main
categories. The simplest of these soft-bodied creatures were sponges. Lacking organs or a
nervous system, they lived by drawing water through their bodies and filtering out food
particles. The cnidarians, which included sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish, had sac-like
bodies and a simple digestive system with a mouth but no anus. They caught food using
tentacles armed with microscopic stinging cells. The third group, the annelids, or
segmented flatworms, had fluid-filled body cavities and breathed through their skins. It's
thought the final stages of Precambrian time were marked by a prolonged global ice age.
This may have led to widespread extinctions, mirroring the bleak endings to the geologic
periods that followed.

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Diagram from Precambrian - Fig. 1., Oasis in space: Earth history from the beginning Time, Life, Evolution, Earth, Million, and Eon, based on a diagram by Preston Cloud.
(Cloud 1988), showing the chemical and mineralogical evolution of the Earth's crust and
atmosphere, along with impact craters, glaciation events, and the evolution of life. Although
life appears fairly early, following a period of prebiotic chemical evolution, it is only
towards the end of the Precambrian that complex organisms arise.
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A newer version of geological eras and the Precambrian, from Wikipedia. As shown
here, the Precambrian includes by far the majority of geological time. Much of this
immensely long interval dominated almost entirely by microbial (and there mostly simply
bacterial) life. The fleeting periods shown as narrow coloured bars to the the far right of the
chart represent the familiar Phanerozoic geological timescale, characterised by life above
the microbial and algae mat stage.

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CHAPTER VII
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Paleozoic
Paleozoic Era is a major interval of geologic time that began 541 million years ago
with the Cambrian explosion, an extraordinary diversification of marine animals, and ended
about 252 million years ago with the end-Permian extinction, the greatest extinction event
in Earth history. The major divisions of the Paleozoic Era, from oldest to youngest, are the
Cambrian (541 million to 485.4 million years ago), Ordovician (485.4 million to 443.8
million years ago), Silurian (443.8 million to 419.2 million years ago), Devonian (419.2
million to 358.9 million years ago), Carboniferous (358.9 million to 298.9 million years
ago), and Permian (298.9 million to 252.2 million years ago) periods. The Paleozoic takes
its name from the Greek word for ancient life.
7.1 Cambrian
The first eon of Earths history, from the first coalesence
of the planet, about 4500 Mya, to about 542 Mya, is referred
to as the Precambrian. From this hint, one might well
suppose that the Cambrian comes next -- which it does, in a
way. Actually, this is the biggest break point in all of
geology. It marks the beginning of the Phanerozoic Eon, the
Paleozoic Era, the Cambrian Period, the Terreneuvian
Epoch, and the Fortunian Age (the first age of the
Cambrian). The Cambrian Period was named in 1835 by the
geologist Adam Sedgwick, after the region of Cambria in
North Wales, where rocks of this age were first found. The
name "Cambria" is a version of Cumbria, a latinisation the
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Welsh Cymry (= countryman, compatriot against the


invading Anglo-Saxons).
Long before it was a formal stratigraphic unit, the

Cambrian was a concept about Earth history. It was understood to be the earliest period in

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which one could find the fossils of multi-celled animals (Metazoa). Since then, metazoans
and their fossilized traces have been found well before 550 Mya. In particular, Ediacarans,
a group of very strange and poorly understood creatures -- but obviously metazoans -- have
been found in many parts of the world with ages pushing the 600 Mya mark.
Consequently, paleontologists now view the Cambrian as the period when the Bilateria
first appeared and, almost at the same time, the first metazoans with shells. The Bilateria
include all living metazoans except jellyfish, corals, and sponges. Bilaterians have a head at
one end of an elongate body which is bilaterally symmetrical (hence the name). Their
embryos all develop a separate layer of embryonic cells, called mesoderm, between the gut
or coelom and the outer wall of the animal. If this whole description suggests a worm,
youve got the right idea. A flatworm is the most basal living form of bilaterian.
Unlike many other, somewhat arbitrary, geological markers, the base of the Cambrian
Period is defined with reference to the underlying paleontological concept. Small worms
rarely leave body fossils, but their burrows are frequently preserved. The burrows of
bilaterian worms are fairly distinctive. Trace fossils are often given names as if they were
organisms, and the earliest well-known bilaterian trace fossil is a type of fossilized burrow
referred to as Treptichnus pedum. The base of the Cambrian is currently defined as the first
occurrence of T. pedum at Fortune Head, near the town of Fortune, on the north coast of
western Newfoundland, Canada.
Paleogeography and Tectonics
The Cambrian period saw most continents located in the southern hemisphere at low
paleolatitudes (near the equator). The Ediacaran supercontinent of Pannotia continued to
assemble in some regions but fragmented into Gondwana Laurentia, Baltica, and various
mostly submerged Asian blocks.
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East. Gondwana remained the largest supercontinent.

Other continents included

Kazakhstania and China (actually China, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indochina). Seas were for
the most part shallow, especially along the edges of the continents. Global (eustatic)

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transgressions occured in the Middle and Late Cambrian, as shallow seas repeatedly
invaded the land, providing a perfect habitat for many types of marine invertebrates. These
shallow epeiric seas covered much of the continents except for Gondwana, where there
were highlands. Other highlands could be found in Eastern Siberia and Central
Kazakhistan.
Climate
The Cambrian climate was generally warm, wet and mild. As there were no
continental landmasses located at the poles, ocean currents were able to circulate freely,
hence there was no significant ice formation. As a result temperatures worldwide were
mild. The Cambrian constituted a benign spell between two great ice ages - the late
Proterozoic Snowball Earth and the Late Ordovician Ice Age.
Life
At the beginning of the Cambrian period, about 540 million years ago, life was
entirely confined to the oceans. During the 53 million years that the Cambrian period
lasted there was the sudden appearance and diversification of almost every major group
(phylum) of animal life, as well as many types that later died out. Animals with shells and
exoskeletons appeared for the first time, including trilobites, brachiopods, molluscs, and
many other groups. This sudden evolutionary burst was so spectacular that it has been
termed the "Cambrian explosion". There hasn't been anything like it on Earth before or
since.
The most characteristic animals of the Cambrian period were the trilobites, a primitive
form of arthropod remarkable for it's highly developed eyes (unusual in such an early
organism). The trilobites appear suddenly during the Atdabanian epoch (several groups are
known, including large spiny types and small planktonic forms), reached their fullest
development in the middle Cambrian and the following (Ordovician) period, and gradually
declined after that and became extinct by the end of the Paleozoic era.
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Other very important groups of Cambrian animals were the sponges, echinoderms

(represented by a large number of different classes), and most interesting of all the softbodied echiurians, which were burrowing worm-like creatures (see right), which seemed to

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have been the most important and predominant carnivores of the time.
The earliest gastropods (marine snails) also appeared in this period, as did the
cephalopods (during the Furongian) and other now extinct lineages of Molluscs. Molluscs
however were still relatively rare, they did not become an important element of the marine
fauna until the Early Ordovician period. The first chordates (vertebrate ancestors) occurred
as did the first foraminifers (shelled amoebas). Many Cambrian creatures however did not
fit into modern categories of organisms; they seemed to have been representatives of
unknown or experimental phyla.
Greatest of all the Cambrian beasties were as the Anomalocarids. Shown here is
Laggania cambria. Averaging 45 to 60 cm, with exceptional specimens reaching 1 or even 2
metres, these animals dwarfed even the largest trilobites. They were armed with twin
grasping organs and a wicked mouth with a ring of teeth in shape rather like a pineapple
slice. Many trilobite exoskeletons have been found with large bites taken out of them, the
result of an encounter with Anomalocaris. Like the shark of today, Anomalocaris . was
perfectly adapted to its environment, and a single species existed without change for some
30 million years or more. Scientists do not agree what group of modern creatures
Anomalocaris was most closely related too. Suggestions most often include arthropods, but
the aschelminthe group of worm-like creatures is another possibility. I am wary of
pigeonholing extinct organisms with living types on the basis of superficial similarity. Like
many Cambrian creatures, Anomalocaris is best put in a phylum of its own.
Halkeria is one of a number of the strange armoured "coat of mail" creatures that
inhabited the early Cambrian oceans. The specimen shown here is about 3.5 cm in length.
In addition to the calcareous scales it possessed two mollusc-like limpet-shaped shells.
Later forms such as the Middle Cambrian Wiwaxia lost the shells and developed long
spines instead. It is not certain that these strange creatures even are molluscs, although a
radula-like structure has been found in Wiwaxia. Jan Bergstrm suggests that they
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represent a group of late surviving "Procoelomates", the ancestors of all higher (Coelomate
body plan) animals.
The enigmatic sponge-like cup-shaped archaeocyaths (left) were very common during

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the early Cambrian, forming great reefs, but died out almost completely by the middle of
the period, leaving no descendents. Plants of the Cambrian period included only algae
(seaweeds). There were no known land plants, the land was still bare of any life other than
microorganisms.
Marine Ecosystem
Cambrian Ecosystems did not seem to have been as robust as those of later times,
perhaps due to the smaller diversity. Cambrian communities were loosely organized and
considerable experimentation and morphological flexibility were features of many
assemblages (Hughes, 1994). Cambrian Lagersttten such as the Burgess Shale contain a
wide range of apparently morphologically disparate organisms. "The period saw a number
of mass extinctions and radical turn-overs of life. By far the most serious was the Botomian
turnover, which, in terms of percentage of overall diversity lost, was even more severe than
the end Permian extinction. Most Small Shelly Animals were wiped out, as were the
majority of archaeocyaths and the worldwide archaeocyath reefs
The Latest Botomian (Toyonian) fauna represented a more traditional trilobitebrachiopod dominated Cambrian ecosystems. But even here there were a number of
extinction events that took a toll on the marine fauna, During the Furongian alone, there
were three distinct bio-stratigraphic intervals in trilobite distribution, each marked by a
mass-extinction. The cause of this is not clear, but it may have been related to climate
change, as most genera affected were warm water species.
Following the earliest Cambrian (Tommotian) fauna, there was a rise of herbivore
grazers (e.g. gastropods), and consequent decline of algal stromatolites . There were almost
no large animals, and only a few predators (chiefly anomalocaridids). Cyanophyte algae
mats

encouraged

mat

scratchers

(diverse

ancestral

mollusks,

esp.

diverse

monoplacophorans and polyplacophorans), and some probable mat-sticking echinoderms


(helioplacoids).
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The Cambrian saw the beginning of bioturbators, with limited vertical mining abilities.

This infauna was generally shallow, burrowing close to the sediment-water interface with
the exception of vertical Skolithos burrows, which were often deep. Trilobites dominated

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the mobile benthos, accounting for over 50% of Cambrian hard-shelled species. In many
exposures, over 90% of the fossils recovered are trilobites. Brachiopods included
"inarticulates"; both linguates (infaunal forms with calcium phosphate shells) and craniids
epifaunal forms with calcite shells). Articulate brachiopods (epifaunal with calcite shells)
are present but rare.
7.2 Ordovician
The Ordovician Period is the second period of the Paleozoic Era. This important
period saw the origin and rapid evolution of many new types of invertebrate animals which
replaced their Cambrian predecessors. Primitive plants move onto land, until then totally
barren. The supercontinent of Gondwana drifted over the south pole, initiating a great Ice
Age that gripped the earth at this time. The end of the period is marked by an extinction
event.
The Ordovician System of strata was founded by Lapworth in 1879 to resolve the
Murchison-Sedgwick conflict over their overlapping claims for their Silurian and Cambrian
systems. Benton & Harper (1997). The name "Ordovician" comes from an ancient Celtic
tribe that once inhabited the region in Wales where rock strata of this period occur.
The Ordovician was originally divided into two epochs, Bala and Dyfed. More
recently, the Tremadoc was removed from the Cambrian and a three-fold division of
Ordovician strata instituted.
Ordovician Geography
The Ordovician Period is the second period of the Paleozoic Era. Ordovician rocks
were first found in Wales, so its name comes from a tribe of people who once lived in the
area where the rocks were found. The Ordovician began about 490 million years ago and
lasted for about 47 million years.
The Continents - Gondwanaland
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Gondwana was a huge supercontinent during the Ordovician Period. It contained the
modern continents of Australia, Africa, Southern Europe, Antarctica and South America.
During the Ordovician Period, Gondwana gradually moved toward the South Pole until it

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covered the pole at the end of the period. Most of Gondwana was covered by water during
the Ordovician.
The Continents-North America and Europe
Modern continents of North America, Western Europe and Northern Europe were located in
the tropics, on or near the equator. These land areas were sometimes covered with water
and sometimes not. Toward the end of the Ordovician Period more of the land was out of
the water. This was due to changes in the Earths climate.
Climate
During the first parts of the Ordovician the climate was fairly warm. The land uplifted
and the continents moved around. When Gondwana stopped its movement over the South
Pole, glaciers formed. This caused the sea level to drop and the climate to change. These
changes led to a mass extinction at the end of the Ordovician Period.
Life In The Ordovician Seas
Life was still primarily found underwater, but there were more different species than
ever before. The trilobites did not die out with the mass extinction at the end of the
Cambrian period. Trilobites lived on and many new species developed.
The Rise of The CephalopodsNew animal forms developed, too. The cephalopods
became the dominant predators of this period. Cephalopods are a group of mollusks that are
related to octopus and squid.The orthoceras was a straight-shelled cephalopod that lived in
the largest open end of its shell. Its feet came out of its head! They could rise and fall in the
ocean water like a submarine. The siphuncle was a tube in the center of the animal. When
filled with air, the animals body floated upward. A burst of air out the back end of the
siphuncle pushed the animal forward.
Other Invertebrates
Brachiopods were also new in the Ordovician period. Brachiopods look like clams, but
they do not belong to the same family. A brachiopods shells do not match. If you look
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closely, one shell is slightly larger at the hinge. The shells themselves each have bilateral
symmetry. Clam shells have identical hinges so their shells are not symmetrical.

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Crinoids were an echinoderm that looked like a feathery plant. They grew long
stems and attached themselves to the ocean floor. The tentacles floated in the water. They
caught the crinoids food. Sponges, corals and even primitive fish lived in Ordovician
waters. The plant life in the water was red and green algae. On the very bottom of the
oceans were the first animals with primitive backbones. They did not move very well, but
they would grow to become the most important new animal group in the sea. The seas of
the Ordovician Period were full of many diverse species.
The First Land Plants
Along the edges of the water, groups of algae evolved into mosses and bryophytes.
These plants must live in watery environments so the water can flow directly into and out
of their cells. These plants had no veins for moving the water around inside their bodies, so
water had to flow between the outside environment and the cells of the plants. These were
true plants, because they had chlorophyll and could make their own food. There were fungi
in the water, too. Fungi feed on decaying matter. Fungi and algae left on the bare land
worked together to form lichen. The lichen could break down the rock they lived upon. The
broken rock became the first soil.
7.3 Silurian
The Silurian Period follows the Ordovician Period in the Paleozoic Era. It began
around 443 million years ago and lasted for 26 million years. Like the periods that have
come before, it is named for an ancient Celtic tribe that lived in Wales where the geologic
evidence was found.
Silurian Climate
The climate was much warmer during the Silurian Period. This caused the glaciers to
melt and the seas to rise. Even though the sea level was rising, there were places where the
land was slowly rising as well. This was due to mountain building as the continental plates
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collided. In these places the seas moved away from the coasts or evaporated from the
shallow areas. This left salt deposits. Plants that had lived in the coastal water had to adapt
to life on land or die.

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Continents
Gondwana was still located in the southern hemisphere, but it stretched from the
Equator, where modern-day Australia was located, to the South Pole, where modern South
America was located. The tectonic plate that contained North America was moving toward
the southeast. By the end of this period it would collide with another plate and form a
mountain range. Most of North America was covered by shallow seas during this time.
Life in the Seas of The Silurian Period
Of course, the warm shallow seas made good conditions for marine life to grow. The
species that survived the mass extinction at the end of the Ordovician Period branched out
and developed new variations. Among these survivors were the nautiloids, brachiopods,
bryozoans and crinoids. Crinoids were filter feeding echinoderms that grew on long stalks
attached to the sea bottom. They looked like flowers floating in the water. The long feathery
arms caught the food for the crinoid.
The Rise of The Eurypterids
Cephalopods were smaller and there were fewer of them than during the Ordovician
Period. The Eurypterids or Sea Scorpions, made their first appearance in the Ordovician
Period. In the Silurian they became the dominant predator. Eurypterids were arthropods.
Arthropods have an exoskeleton and jointed legs. Crabs, insects, and spiders are all
arthropods. One of the Sea Scorpions of the Silurian grew to be ten feet long. It was a huge
predator that had large claws for snagging its prey.
Coral; The New Reef Builders
The new life in the Silurian Period was the coral reef. Tabulate corals and rugose
corals formed these reefs in the Silurian rocks. Tabulate corals lived in colonies that formed
chains. The chains sometimes looked like clumps of organ pipes. Rugose corals are often
called horn corals because their shape looks like the horn of a bull. The tentacles of the
animal reached out the top of the cup. The huge reefs made great hiding places for the new
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animal that lived in the ocean: the fish.


Fish Gain Importance During The Silurian

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Fish were a growing in importance during the Silurian Period. At the beginning, most
of the fish were jawless. These were some of the earliest vertebrates, animals with a soft
cartilage backbone. By the end of the Silurian many fish with jaws and real bones were
swimming in the waters. These animals would soon rule the seas.
Life On Land
Mosses and other primitive plants grew over the land near the waters edge. They
continued the work of the lichen turning the rock into soil. There are a few fossils from the
end of the Silurian Period that show us early insects lived among these mosses and made
their own colonies.
7.4 Devonian
The Devonian Period of the Paleozoic Era lasted from 417 million years ago to 354
million years ago. It is named for Devon, England where the old red sandstone of the
Devonian was first studied.

The Continents of The Devonian


During the Devonian there were important changes in the land masses on the globe.

North America and Europe had collided forming a large continent called Euramerica. This
caused the formation of the Appalachian Mountain Range. The other large land mass was
Gondwana. It was made up of South America, Africa, Antarctica, India and Australia. These
two large land masses lay close to one another near the equator.
The two continents were moving toward each other throughout the Devonian Period.
The waterway between the two continents covered a subduction zone. This is an area where
one plate is moving underneath the other. Eventually this would mean that the two
continents would collide to form the supercontinent Pangea in the Permian Period. That
event is more than 64 million years later.

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Plants Cover The Land


Laying so close to the equator meant that the climate of the Devonian was warm. The

warm temperatures made life on land particularly good for the plants. They developed
vascular tissues to carry water and food through roots and leaves. The most important

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development was the seed. Now plants were not dependent on the presence of water for
reproduction and they could move further inland. Ferns and the first trees began to cover
the land.

Insects and Other Animals Find Homes On Land


The plant-covered lands made a good home for the first wingless insects and spiders.

Even a primitive vertebrate, the tetrapod or four-footed vertebrate, developed the ability to
live outside the water and move on land.

The Age of Fishes


The Devonian is known as the Age of Fishes. It is famous for the thousands of species

of fish that developed in Devonian seas. We know this because of the fish fossils found in
Devonian rocks. When fish first started to develop, they had no jaws and the support
structure was made of cartilage. This material doesnt fossilize well, so the earliest fossils
were of fish whose outside skin was protected by scales and plates made of boney tissue.
These fish were called Ostracoderms. Their name means shell-skins. These animals
appear in rock from the late Silurian and early Devonian periods.
Mass Extinction Ends The Period
Species had begun to branch out and include both land and water habitats. The
Devonian Period ended with a mass extinction. The Devonian extinction hurt the water
habits much more than those on land. The sponges and corals were the most affected. No
major reef building happened again for thousands of years.
7.5 Carboniferous
The Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic Era began 354 million years ago. It lasted
for about 64 million years, until 290 million years ago. The name Carboniferous came
from the large amounts of carbon-bearing coal that was formed during the period.

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Shifting Continents Create Mountains As Pangea Is Born


The large land masses of Euramerica and Gondwana continued to move toward one

another and collide during the Carboniferous Period. Collisions meant some of the land
uplifted into mountains. These mountains had no plants covering them. During rainy

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seasons huge amounts of surface rock was washed into flood plains and deltas. Eurameica
and Gondwana were working to form the large supercontinent Pangea that would be
important during the next period of the Paleozoic Era.

Invertebrates Contribute To The Formation of Limestone


In the early part of the Carboniferous Period, the Mississippian Epoch, much of North

America was covered by warm, shallow seas. The many animals living in these waters
contributed their shells to the formation of limestone. There were so many crinoids living in
these waters that they make up a big part of the limestone formation.

The Lophophorata
There were many bryozoans living in the shallow seas of the Carboniferous Period.

Bryozoans are filter feeding animals that form colonies or attach to rock surfaces.
Brachiopods covered the sea floor. These bi-valves look like clams, but are actually related
to the bryozoans. Both are members of the phyla Lophophorata.

The Pennsylvanian Epoch


In the middle and late Carboniferous Period, the land was rising up out of the waters.

Some of this was because of the land masses moving toward each other and pushing the
land upward, but it was also because of the thickening of the Earths crust. Two ice sheets
over the South Pole also took a large amount of water out of the oceans and the water cycle.
More of the land was exposed to the air at this time. Both plants and animals had to
adapt to the changing habitat. Short periods of drought brought on by the glaciers caused
mass extinctions of the invertebrates that lived in the shallow seas. The shallow seas
became swamps between the ocean and the dry land.

Plants Put The Carbon In Carboniferous


New plants developed in the warm, humid climate and swampy conditions of this

period. Large trees covered with bark and huge ferns grew in the middle Carboniferous
swamps. The plants gave off so much oxygen that the air had much more oxygen in it. This
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allowed plants and animals to reach sizes that are not known in todays atmosphere. When
the huge trees and ferns died, they fell into waters that did not have bacteria to help them
decompose. These plants formed peat beds. Eventually, with the weight of layers and

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layers, these peat beds turned to coal.

The End of The Carboniferous Period


The end of the Carboniferous period is marked by global climate changes due to the

glaciers that covered the South Pole. The mass extinctions that mark the end of other
geologic periods were not present, yet many species did go extinct during this time. The
marine environments were most affected by these climate changes, so the extinctions were
mostly invertebrates that spent their lives in the seas. Horn corals, trilobites and some forms
of crinoids were on the road to extinction that would come in the next period,
7.6 Permian
The Permian Period is the final period of the Paleozoic Era. It began about 290 million
years ago and lasted until 248 million years ago. The greatest mass extinction that has ever
occurred on earth took place at the end of this 42-million-year period. Its name comes from
a region of west-central Russia called Perm Oblast. This is where rocks from this time were
first found.

Pangea Is Now Complete


For most of the Permian, life on Earth was much like it had been in the Carboniferous.

Temperatures were cooler because the continent of Pangea was moving northward.
Mountains were forming as the supercontinent Pangea moved. When the continent of
Siberia collided into the northern part of Euramerica, Pangea was complete. The Ural
Mountains were pushed up by this collision.

Conditions Become Dry On Pangea


Pangea was shaped like a large C. It surrounded the Tethys Sea. The rest of the Earth

was covered by a huge ocean named Panthalassa. Even though the ocean covered much of
the earth, Pangea was so large that the interior did not benefit from the ocean waters.
Deserts were places in the center of Pangea where the temperatures changed from very cold
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to very hot. In some places there was rarely or never any rain. Over all the earth was dry
during the Permian Period.

Plants Adapt To Dry Climate

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The swamp land dried up and many of the plants that needed the water died out. New
plants developed that were adapted to the dryer conditions. They were called gymnosperms.
These plants had seeds. One of the earliest of these plants still exists today. It is called the
Ginkgo. Most of the trees living during this time period were conifers. Conifers are trees
with seeds in cones.
The End of The Permian Period
The corals were not the only species to become extinct. The Permian Extinction was
largest mass extinction that had ever occurred. No extinction since has killed so much of
the life on the planet. In the seas, 90 to 95 percent of the species went extinct or were
severely harmed. On land the damage was less severe, but some species, like the
pelycosuars, died out completely.

Mass Extinction Theories

Volcanic Activity
There are many theories about the cause of this great extinction. It could have been
caused by huge amounts of volcanic activity, more than any that has been experienced since
written history. We know from recent volcano eruptions that large eruptions can cause the
temperature to drop all around the globe.
Comets and Meteors
Another theory is that a comet or meteor could have hit the planet, setting off a series
of events that would have caused changes to temperature and sea levels, including the
formation of glaciers. Others think that the formation of a land mass as huge as Pangea
upset the balance of climate that happens when the ocean waters can affect more of the land
surface.
No matter what the cause, the extinction event that took place at the end of the
Permian Period was so important that it brought the end to the Paleozoic Era. Life on Earth
would never again look as it had during the Paleozoic Era.
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CHAPTER VIII
Mesozoic
The Mesozoic Era begins where the upheavals of the Permian Extinctions end. A mass
extinction at the end of the Permian Period had eliminated most of the species of life that
had existed throughout the Paleozoic Era. Sometimes called the Age of Dinosaurs because
this era becomes dominated by dinosaurs and reptiles.
8.1 Triassic
The Triassic Period is the first period of the
Mesozoic Era. The great extinction at the end of the
Permian period had brought the end to 90% of the
living species on Earth. The Triassic was a time of
growing new species to repopulate the planet.
A New Era
This time was the beginning of a new era, the
Mesozoic Era. Geologists call it a new era because the
life supported on the continents was so different from
life during the Paleozoic Era. During the Paleozoic,
most life had been in the sea. It was only at the end of
the Paleozoic that life had gradually moved onto land
and begun to develop animal and plant species that
could live out of the water.
The Triassic began around 248 million years ago, after the mass extinction that
brought an end to the Permian Period. It lasted about 42 million years. The Triassic Period
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ended
around 206 million years ago. It had a special climate because of the way the land

was placed on the Earth. At the beginning of the Triassic, the land was all together in one
supercontinent, Pangea. It straddled the equator, so the climate was warm.

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Pangea Was Warm and Dry


Pangea was shaped like a giant C with the opening surrounding the Tethys Sea. All
around the outside edges of Pangea was the Panthalassia Ocean. There were no shallow
seas surrounding Pangea. The shape of Pangea kept the Panthalassia Ocean waters from
bringing cool, moist air to any parts except the coast. This made the inland areas dry and
desert-like.
Laurasia and Gondwanaland
Pangea started to break up almost as soon as it was formed. By the middle of the
period, the continent was on its way to becoming two super continents. The sea floor was
spreading along a rift at the bottom of the Tethys Sea. It was forcing Pangea apart. The part
of Pangea above the equator was Laurasia. It was a combination of North America and
Eurasia. As the sea floor pulled apart, Laurasia moved to the north. The other part,
Gondwana, moved to the south. It was made up of Africa, South America, India, Antarctica
and Australia.
New Mountains In North America
On the ocean side of Pangea, mountains were just beginning to form. Volcanoes
erupted where the plates were moving. One plate was being forced under another. These
were the beginnings of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Most of the western part of
North America was under water during the Triassic. The new mountains looked like a line
of islands in this ocean.
Many species that survived the Permian Extinction died out during the early part of the
Triassic. Trilobites, bryozoans, and rugose (horn) corals all disappeared. But many new
species developed. The ammonites and brachiopods survived and began to recover. One
type of ammonite was especially plentiful during the Triassic Period. The suture lines are
lines between the sections of the ammonite. When the suture lines formed a wavy pattern, it
is called a ceratitic ammonite. There were many ceratitic ammonites in the Triassic seas.
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Minor Extinction
Many of the important species of both plants and animals got their start during the
Triassic Period. It was a time of transition. The few species that survived the Permian mass

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extinction were growing into new species. The extinction that marked the end of the
Triassic Period seemed small compared to the one that ended the Permian Period. Only
about 20% of life in the oceans and on land died out completely. The species that were
affected came back with strength and would soon dominate the world of the Jurassic and
Cretaceous Periods.
8.2 Jurassic
The Jurassic Period was the Age of the Dinosaurs. It began after the Triassic Period
around 206 million years ago. It lasted until 144 million years ago, more than 60 million
years in the middle of the Mesozoic Era.
Pangea Splits
Pangea continued to split apart during the Jurassic. This caused volcanoes to erupt
along the Tethys Sea floor where the rift between the continents began.
North American Mountain Building
On the ocean side of Pangea, the plates continued to collide. One plate was being
forced under another. Folds, uplifts and volcano eruptions occurred along the moving
plates. The mountains that stretch from British Columbia, through North America and into
South America were beginning to form during this time.
Warm Climate Fosters New Species
The climate was warm and stable. Many types of animals and plants developed. The
numbers of different species increased greatly during the Jurassic Period.
The Seas of The Jurassic
In the seas, there were more and more invertebrate species. Belemnites and ammonites
increased and were the most important of the invertebrates during the Jurassic Period.
Gastropods, or sea snails, were a mollusk that grew plentiful in the Jurassic period. Corals
began to produce reefs in the warm seas. There were many types of bony fishes, sharks and
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rays swimming in the tropical seas.


Abundant Plant Life Feeds The Dinosaurs
As the land pulled apart, the seas rose. Warm shallow seas again covered parts of

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Laurasia (North America and Eurasia). With the warm seas touching the land, the climate
became more humid and tropical. Plants grew thick and tall. There were so many cycads
that the Jurassic is also known as the Age of Cycads. Cycads are a seed plant with leaves
that look like palms. They have heavy trunks. Cycads still exist in modern times, but they
are not as large or as plentiful as the ones that lived during the Jurassic Period. All of this
plant life fed the many different types of herbivorous dinosaurs that developed. Of course
lots of herbivores means good eating for the carnivores. So many different types of
dinosaurs lived during this period that it is known as the Age of the Dinosaurs.
The first bird-like species developed during the Jurassic. Archaeopteryx is a wellknown example of a link between dinosaurs and birds. Archaeopteryx had some
characteristics of the dinosaurs like a long tail, and finger claws. It also had some
characteristics of modern birds like feathers.
In recent times many fossils have been found with both dinosaur and bird
characteristics. Confuciusornus is one found in China. Some raptor species have been found
with clear feather imprints. Most paleontologists today consider birds to be closely related
to the dinosaurs. The Archaeopteryx may not have been the first dinosaur to have feathers.
But it did cause scientists to rethink the definition of birds.
Mammals
Mammals continued through the Jurassic Period. They remained small. Many different
species developed, but the mammals were still not playing a large part in the day-to-day life
of the Jurassic. That was all about the dinosaurs!
8.3 Cretaceous
The Cretaceous Period is the final period of the Mesozoic Era. It covered the time span
of 144 million years ago to 65 million years ago. There was a minor mass extinction at the
end of the Jurassic Period that is the sign of the beginning of the Cretaceous. Many of the
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species of bivalved mollusks (similar to clams) became extinct at this time.


The Continents During The Cretaceous
The changes to the continents continued in the Cretaceous Period. Laurasia and

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Gondwana continued to move apart. On the eastern side of Laurasia, the North Atlantic
Ocean was formed. It covered the east coast of North America and most of western Europe.
The Break up of Gondwana
In Gondwana, South America and Africa broke apart. The ocean floor was spreading
along a crack in the earths crust called a rift. This eventually led to the South Atlantic
Ocean. Another rift on the eastern side of Africa caused a waterway between Africa and a
body of land that contained modern Madagascar and India.
Rising Sea Levels
The rift between Africa and South America created a long chain of volcanic mountains
underwater. These mountains grew as the Atlantic Ocean got wider. As these mountains
grew they displaced a tremendous amount of water. So much in fact that the water level of
the seas was about 100 meters higher than today. This caused many inland seas to form. In
North America, an inland sea divided the continent across the plains of modern-day Canada
and the United States all the way to the Arctic Ocean.
New Dinosaurs
Animal life continued to develop much as it had in the Jurassic. New species of
dinosaurs became important. The ceratopsian dinosaurs appeared for the first time. These
were plant-eating ornithischian, or bird-hipped, dinosaurs. The most famous example is the
triceratops. It had three horns and a huge, bony frill that formed its skull.
Major Extinctions
The KT event caused the extinction of more than 70 % of the species that lived in the
oceans and 15% of the species on land. In fact, all land animal species over 50 pounds seem
to have become extinct. Nearly all dinosaurs became extinct at this time. Modern birds,
descendents of the dinosaurs, are all that remain of the animals that had ruled the planet for
so many millions of years. In the seas, the ammonites and belemnites were wiped out along
with the large marine reptiles including the icthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs.
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Dawning of The New Era


Even though so much of the life of the Cretaceous Period had been hurt or eliminated,
the species that survived were ready for the hard work ahead. The Cenozoic Era that

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follows is the time of the mammals. With the large reptiles out of the way, these small land
animals were able to develop into many new and different species. It wouldnt be long
before it would be the mammals that ruled the earth.

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CHAPTER IX
Cenozoic (The Tertiary Period)
9.1 Definition
The Cenozoic Era is the last and most recent of the geologic periods. Its name means
new life coming from the Greek root kainos, meaning new, and zoic, life. While this
new life came to refer to mammals-thus coined The Age of Mammals- this new life could
have just as easily been the angiosperm or flowering plants, the insects, the newest fish
(teleostei) or modern birds. All of these groups, including the
mammals, continued to evolve during this present Era.
Cenozoic Era is the third of the major eras of Earths history,
beginning about 66 million years ago and extending to the
present. It was the interval of time during which the continents
assumed their modern configuration and geographic positions
and during which Earths flora and fauna evolved toward those
of the present.
The term Cenozoic, originally spelled Kainozoic, was
introduced by English geologist John Phillips in an 1840
Penny Cyclopaedia article to designate the most recent of the
three major subdivisions of the Phanerozoic Eon. Derived
from the Greek for recent life, it reflects the sequential
development and diversification of life on Earth from the
Paleozoic (ancient life) through the Mesozoic (middle life).
Today, the Cenozoic is internationally accepted as the
youngest of the three subdivisions of the fossiliferous part of
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Earth history.
The era began on a big down note, catching the tail end of the Cretaceous-Paleogene

extinction event at the close of the Cretaceous Period that wiped out the remaining non-

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avian dinosaurs. The term Cenozoic, first spelled "Kainozoic," was originally used in an
1840 entry in the Penny Cyclopedia encyclopedia in an article written by British geologist
John Phillips. The name is derived from the Greek phrase meaning recent life.
9.2 The Classification of Cenozoic
The Cenozoic Era is generally divided into three periods: the Paleogene (66 million to
23 million years ago), the Neogene (23 million to 2.6 million years ago), and the
Quaternary (2.6 million years ago to the present); however, the era has been traditionally
divided into the Tertiary and Quaternary periods. The designations Tertiary and Quaternary,
however, are relics of early attempts in the late 18th century at formulating a stratigraphic
classification that included the now wholly obsolete terms Primary and Secondary. In 1856
Austrian geologist Moritz Hrnes introduced the terms Paleogene and Neogene, the latter
encompassing rocks equivalent to those described by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell as
Miocene and older and newer Pliocene (which included what he later called the
Pleistocene). Subsequent investigators have determined that the designation Neogene
correctly applies to the rock systems and corresponding time intervals delineated by Lyell,
though some authorities prefer to exclude the Pleistocene from the Neogene. The Paleogene
encompasses the Paleocene, Eocene, and Oligocene epochs. (The terms Paleocene and
Oligocene were coined subsequent to Lyells work and inserted in the lower part of the
Cenozoic stratigraphic scheme.) The Neogene spans the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, and
the Quaternary includes the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs.
According to classification oh the cenozoic above, the cenozoic era is commonly
divided into three periods :
1. Paleogene Period (65-23 million years ago), which consists of the Paleocene,
Eocene

and Oligocene epochs).

Paleocene
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The Paleocene Period began after the extinction of the dinosaurs. Mainly nocturnal

mammals that had cowered in the shadows of dinosaurs for millions of years eventually
evolved into a vast number of different forms to fill the newly vacant environmental niches.

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At the beginning of the Paleocene, most mammals were tiny and rodent-like. With time,
mammals grew in size, number, and diversity. Many early mammal designs of this time
would soon become extinct, but others would survive and then evolve into other forms. The
diversity of birds, other animals, and plants increased, and species became more
specialized. Although dinosaurs were gone, their reptile cousins lived on in the form of
turtles, crocodiles, lizards, and snakes.
Eocene
The first grasses appeared in the Eocene Epoch (from about 54 to 37 million years
ago) with growth near the root as opposed to the tip, providing a vastly expanded and
renewable food resource for the herbovores; this allowed adaptation to life on the savanna
and prairie and the evolution of running animals such as the Equiidae (the horse family).
The grazing mammals evolved the teeth enabling a diet of harsh grass. The Eocene Epoch
was a period when flowering plants continued a massive radiation that began in the
Paleocene Epoch. Plants thrived, and with that many animals as new environmental niches
were filled. The first grasses also provided a refuge for many animals. Small mammals
radiate. Many new species of shrubs, trees and small plants appeared. A variety of trees
thrived in a warm Eocene climate, including beech, elm, chestnut, magnolia, redwood,
birch, and cedar, and more. The evolution of plants was providing a powerful selective
pressure across the entire animal Kingdom, and many new symbiotic systems appeared.
Oligocene
The Oligocene Epoch extends from about 34 million to 23 million years years ago.
The name Oligocene comes from the Greek oligos (meaning few) and ceno (meaning new)
and is in reference to the paucity of new mammalian animals after their radiation during the
preceding Eocene Epic. The Oligocene is often considered as an important window of
environmental transition from the tropical Eocene and the cooler Miocene. The start of the
Oligocene is marked by a major extinction event that might have been caused by a meteor
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impact in Siberia or near the Chesapeake Bay. Angiosperms continued their expansion
throughout the world, as did grasses. Temperate deciduous woodlands mostly replaced
tropical and sub-tropical forests, while plains and deserts became more commonplace.

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Among the animals, mammals diversified markedly, and marine fauna evolved to forms
closely resembling those extant today. Ancestors of modern elephants and rhinoceros grew
to large size in Africa, where the first apes primate belonging to suborder Anthropoidea that
includes monkeys, apes, and humans, also appeared.
2. Neogene Period (23-2.6 million years ago)
The Neogene Period contains the Miocene and Pliocene epochs. During this long
period, while some mammal groups evolved markedly, others changed little. Importantly,
the earliest hominids arose on the continent of Africa.
Miocene
The Miocene Epoch extends from about 23 to 5 million years ago. The name comes
from the Greek words meion (less) and ceno (new) because of the smaller proportion of
modern sea invertebrates than the subsequent Pliocene Epoch. The Miocene is thus a very
long 18 million years, and generally marks the transition from the far prehistoric world to a
pseudo-modern world. A major expansion of grasslands occurred as forests declined in the
cooler and dryer climate, driving selection and radiation of large herbivores, including the
ruminants which are ancestors of modern cattle and deer. Mammals such as wolves, horses
and deer as well as birds also generally evolved to closely resemble forms extant today.
Pliocene
The Pliocene Epoch extends from 5.3 million to 1.8 million years before present. The
name comes from the Greek words pleion (more) and ceno (new) and roughly means the
continuation of the recent in reference to the fact that mammals were essentially modern in
form. The Pliocene climate was also relative cool and dry as in modern times. These
modern climates reduced tropical vegetation and shrank tropical forest to a band near the
equator. Concurrently, deciduous and coniferous forests, tundra, grasslands, dry savannahs
and deserts filled the space.
Continental drift would play a major role is how animals, and particularly terrestrial
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mammals were to distribute. South America linked to North America through the Isthmus
of Panama, to the detriment of South American marsupials, and precipitating a drop in
Atlantic Ocean temperatures. The collision of Africa and Europe formed the Mediterranean

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Sea, and disconnected part of the former Tethys Ocean. Receding sea levels formed a land
bridge between Alaska and Asia.
Both marine and terrestrial life was for the most part modern, though discernibly more
primitive. Herbivores grew in size, as did their predators. The first recognizable human
ancestors, the australopithecines, appeared in the Pliocene. Mammalian life evolved in
continent-dependent ways, and some migration occurred between continents. In North
America, rodents, mastodonts, elephant-like gomphotheres, and opossums were notably
prolific, while hoofed animals generally declined. Africas hoofed animals and primates
were notably successful, and the australopithecines (some of the first hominids) appeared
late in the Pliocene The Pliocene seas were thrived with mammals such as seals and sea
lions.
3. Quaternary Period (2.6 million years ago to the present)
This Period consisting the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs). While it is widely
accepted that we are still in the Holocene Epoch, some scientists argue that we have entered
the Anthropocene Epoch. In a 2010 article in the scientific journal Environmental Science
& Technology, scientists made the case for a new epoch, blaming humans for causing a
drastic shift in conditions.
9.3 Tectonics and Climatic Conditions

Tectonics
Cenozoic rocks are extensively developed on all the continents, particularly on

lowland plains, as, for example, the Gulf and Atlantic coastal plains of North America.
They are generally less consolidated than older rocks, although some are indurated
(cemented) as a result of high pressure due to deep burial, chemical diagenesis, or high
temperaturenamely, metamorphism. Sedimentary rocks predominate during the
Cenozoic, and more than half the worlds petroleum occurs in such rocks of this age.
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Igneous rocks are represented by extensive early Cenozoic flood basalts (those of East
Greenland and the Deccan trap of India) and the late Cenozoic flood basalts of the
Columbia River in Washington, as well as by numerous volcanoes in the circum-Pacific

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System (the Ring of Fire) and ocean island chains such as Hawaii.
Several of the worlds great mountain ranges were built during the Cenozoic. The
main Alpine orogeny, which produced the Alps and Carpathians in southern Europe and the
Atlas Mountains in northwestern Africa, began roughly between 37 million and 24 million
years ago. The Himalayas were formed some time after the Indian Plate collided with the
Eurasian Plate. These lofty mountains marked the culmination of the great uplift that
occurred during the late Cenozoic when the Indian Plate drove many hundreds of
kilometres into the underbelly of Asia. They are the product of the low-angle underthrusting
of the northern edge of the Indian Plate under the southern edge of the Eurasian Plate.
From about five million years ago, the Rocky Mountains and adjoining areas were
elevated by rapid uplift of the entire region without faulting. This upwarping sharply
steepened stream gradients, enabling rivers to achieve greater erosional power. As a result,
deep river valleys and canyons, such as the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in
northern Arizona, were cut into broad upwarps of sedimentary rock during late Cenozoic
time.
On a global scale the Cenozoic witnessed the further dismemberment of the Northern
Hemispheric supercontinent of Laurasia: Greenland and Scandinavia separated during the
early Cenozoic about 55 million years ago, and the Norwegian-Greenland Sea emerged,
linking the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The Atlantic continued to expand while the
Pacific experienced a net reduction in size as a result of continued seafloor spreading. The
equatorially situated eastwest Tethyan seaway linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was
modified significantly in the east during the middle Eoceneabout 45 million years ago
by the junction of India with Eurasia, and it was severed into two parts by the confluence of
Africa, Arabia, and Eurasia during the early Miocene approximately 18 million years ago.
The western part of the Tethys evolved into the Mediterranean Sea not long after it had
been cut off from the global ocean system about 6 million to 5 million years ago and had
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formed evaporite deposits which reach up to several kilometres in thickness in a landlocked basin that may have resembled Death Valley in present-day California. Antarctica
remained centred on the South Pole throughout the Cenozoic, but the northern continents

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converged in a northward direction.


Climatic Conditions
The global climate was much warmer during the early Cenozoic than it is today, and
equatorial-to-polar thermal gradients were less than half of what they are at present.
Cooling of Earth began about 50 million years ago and, with fluctuations of varying
amounts, has continued inexorably to the present interglacial climatic period. It is to be
noted that a unique feature of the Cenozoic was the development of glaciation on the
Antarctic continent about 35 million years ago and in the Northern Hemisphere between 3
million and 2.5 million years ago. Glaciation left an extensive geologic record on the
continents in the form of predominantly unconsolidated tills and glacial moraines, which in
North America extend in a line as far south as Kansas, Illinois, Ohio, and Long Island, New
York, and on the ocean floor in the form of ice-rafted detritus dropped from calving
icebergs.
The most significant period of global warming, known as the PaleoceneEocene
Thermal Maximum, took place of 55.8 million years ago. It was followed by a long cool,
dry period. The current global warming event has been set off primarily by human activity.
Each segment of the Cenozoic experienced different climates. During the Paleogene Period,
most of the Earths climate was tropical. The Neogene Period saw a drastic cooling, which
continued into the Pleistocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period.
As for the changing landscape, the continents drifted apart during the Paleogene
Period, creating vast stretches of oceans. This had a significant impact on the climate and
marine life surrounding each continent. During the Pleistocene Epoch, glaciers covered
central North America, extending as far east as New York, south to Kansas and Nebraska
and west to the northern West Coast. The Great Lakes were formed as the glaciers receded.
Several of the worlds foremost mountain ranges, including the Alps, Himalayas and the
Rocky Mountains, were formed during the Cenozoic Era.
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9.4 Biotic Evolution


Cenozoic life was strikingly different from that of the Mesozoic. The great diversity

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that characterizes modern-day flora is attributed to the explosive expansion and adaptive
radiation of the angiosperms (flowering plants) that began during the Late Cretaceous. As
climatic differentiation increased over the course of the Cenozoic, flora became more and
more provincial. Deciduous angiosperms, for instance, came to predominate in colder
regions, whereas evergreen varieties prevailed in the subtropics and tropics.
Fauna also underwent dramatic changes during the Cenozoic. As was discussed in
earlier sections, the end of the Cretaceous brought the eradication of dinosaurs on land and
of large swimming reptiles (e.g., ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, and plesiosaurs) in marine
environments. Nektonic ammonites, squidlike belemnites, sessile reef-building mollusks
known as rudistids, and most microscopic plankton also died out at this time. The Cenozoic
witnessed a rapid diversification of life-forms in the ecological niches left vacant by this
great terminal Cretaceous extinction (or KT extinction). In particular, mammals, which
had existed for more than 100 million years before the advent of the Cenozoic Era,
experienced substantial evolutionary radiation. Marsupials developed a diverse array of
adaptive types in Australia and South America free from the predations of carnivorous
placental mammals. The placental mammals, which today make up more than 95 percent of
known mammals, radiated at a rapid rate. Ungulates (or hoofed mammals) with clawed feet
evolved during the Paleocene (66 million to about 55.8 million years ago). This epoch saw
the development and proliferation of the earliest perissodactyls (odd-toed ungulates, such as
horses, tapirs, rhinoceroses, and two extinct groups, the chalicotheres and titanotheres) and
artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates, including pigs, peccaries, hippopotamuses, camels,
llamas, chevrotains, deer, giraffes, sheep, goats, musk-oxen, antelopes, and cattle).
During the later Cenozoic, perissodactyl diversity declined markedly, but artiodactyls
continued to diversify. Elephants, which evolved in the late Eocene about 40 million years
ago, spread throughout much of the world and underwent tremendous diversification at this
time. Many placental forms of giant size, such as the sabre-toothed cat, giant ground sloths,
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and woolly mammoths, inhabited the forests and the plains in the Pliocene (5.3 million to
1.8 million years ago). It was also about this time that the first hominids appeared. Early
modern humans, however, did not emerge until the Pleistocene.

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Among marine life-forms, mollusks (primarily bivalves [pelecypods] and gastropods)


became highly diversified, as did reef-building corals characteristic of the tropical belt.
Planktonic foraminiferans (pseudopod-using unicellular organisms protected by a test or
shell) underwent two major radiationsthe first in the Paleocene and the second in the
Miocenepunctuated by a long (15-million20-million-year) mid-Cenozoic reduction in
diversity related in all likelihood to global cooling.
9.5 Human Evolution
Marine life in the Cenozoic began much as it is today. Land animals and birds
continued evolving. Near the beginning of the Cenozoic the world was dominated by birds,
crocodiles, and only a few mammals. It was later that mammals began to thrive and
diversify intensely. Birds still outnumbered mammals significantly, making it appear that
the dinosaur still had their hold on the world. However, the land was now dominated by
mammals. The Neogene period saw a rise in savannas, flowers, and perhaps most
importantly, grass. The grass created a change in mammal evolution.
Mammals similar to horses, cows, and other grazers appeared. It was late in the
Cenozoic that modern man or Homo sapiens began to populate the earth. There are several
conflicting theories on the origin of man. Human ancestors may have evolved around 1
million years ago. The species Homo sapiens was probably formed by 50,000 years ago.
However, it isn't until about 6,000 years ago that evidences such as a written language and
cities began to form and humanity began to grow into what it has now become.

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CHAPTER X
Cenozoic (The Quaternary Period)
10.1 All About The Cenozoic and The Human Evolution
In the geologic history of Earth, quaternary is a unit of time within the Cenozoic Era,
beginning 2,588,000 years ago and continuing to the present day. The Quaternary has been
characterized by several periods of glaciation (the ice ages of common lore), when ice
sheets many kilometres thick have covered vast areas of the continents in temperate areas.
During and between these glacial periods, rapid changes in climate and sea level have
occurred, and environments worldwide have been altered. These variations in turn have
driven rapid changes in life-forms, both flora and fauna. Beginning some 200,000 years
ago, they were responsible for the rise of modern humans.
The Quaternary is one of the beststudied parts of the geologic record. In
part this is because it is well preserved in
comparison with the other periods of
geologic time. Less of it has been lost to
erosion, and the sediments are not usually
altered

by

rock-forming

processes.

Quaternary rocks and sediments, being


the most recently laid geologic strata, can
be found at or near the surface of the Earth in valleys and on plains, seashores, and even the
seafloor. These deposits are important for unraveling geologic history because they are
most easily compared to modern sedimentary deposits. The environments and geologic
processes earlier in the period were similar to those of today; a large proportion of
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Quaternary
fossils are related to living organisms; and numerous dating techniques can be

used to provide relatively precise timing of events and rates of change.


The term Quaternary originated early in the 19th century when it was applied to the

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youngest deposits in the Paris Basin in France by French geologist Jules Desnoyers, who
followed an antiquated method of referring to geologic eras as Primary, Secondary,
Tertiary, and so on. Beginning with the work of Scottish geologist Charles Lyell in the
1830s, the Quaternary Period was divided into two epochs, the Pleistocene and the
Holocene, with the Pleistocene (and therefore the Quaternary) understood to have begun
some 1.8 million years ago. In 1948 a decision was made at the 18th International
Geological Congress (IGC) in London that the base of the Pleistocene Series should be
fixed in marine rocks exposed in the coastal areas of Calabria in southern Italy. As ratified
by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) in 1985, the type section for
boundary between the Pleistocene and the earlier Pliocene occurs in a sequence of 1.8million-year-old marine strata at Vrica in Calabria. However, no decision was made to
equate the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch to the beginning of the Quaternary Period,
and indeed the very status of the Quaternary as a period within the geologic time scale had
come into question. Various gatherings of the IGC in the 19th and 20th centuries had agreed
to retain both the Tertiary and Quaternary as useful time units, particularly for climatic- and
continent-based studies, but a growing number of geologists came to favour dividing the
Cenozoic Era into two other periods, the Paleogene and the Neogene. In 2005 the ICS
decided to recommend keeping the Tertiary and Quaternary in the time scale, but only as
informal sub-eras of the Cenozoic.

The Classification of The Quaternary Period


a) The Pleistocene Epoch: 1.8 million to 11,000 years ago
b) The Holocene Epoch

: 11,000 years ago to present

Paleoclimate
The best records of climate change during the Quaternary are oxygen isotope records

taken from deep-sea cores and glacial ice cores. (See the section Sea-level changes.) These
records are representative of changes in ice volume and temperature, and they reflect global
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processes as well as some local conditions. They provide measures of the magnitude of
changes and the timing of cycles, which can then be related to sedimentary sequences on
land and ocean margins. Cycles of humidity and dryness can be determined from lake

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levels, pollen records, dust in ice cores, and computer modeling.


Oxygen isotope records indicate that, during peak glacial levels of the Quaternary, the
Greenland summit was more than 20 C (36 F) colder than present. Vostok Station,
Antarctica, may have declined by 15 C (27 F) from its already frigid mean annual
temperature of 55 C (67 F). Similar extremes are assumed to have occurred on and
near the major Pleistocene ice sheets. From the records of pollen and plant fossils,
reconstructions of the last glacial termination in northern Europe, Scandinavia, and North
America show July temperatures 1015 C (1827 F) below present, as well as similar
ranges for mean annual temperature. Reconstructions of changes in the tropics have been
more controversial. Marine microfossils have been interpreted as indicating temperatures
only 12 C (24 F) cooler than the present, whereas ice cores from a mountain glacier in
the tropical Andes imply cooling of 58 C (914 F). This latter range is in accordance
with strontium-calcium ratios in fossil corals. Recent techniques of chemical analysis of
deep-sea sediments suggest a cooling of 23 C (45 F) at the surface of the tropical
Pacific. These differences may seem to be small, but they have important implications for
understanding the processes of ocean and atmospheric circulation.

Quaternary Life
The length of the Quaternary is short relative to geologic and evolutionary time scales,

but the rate of evolutionary change during this period is high. It is a basic tenet of ecology
that disturbance increases diversity and ultimately leads to evolutionary pressures. The
Quaternary is replete with forces of disturbance and evidence for evolution in many living
systems. Examples of disturbance include the direct destruction of habitat by glacial
advance, the drying of vast plains, increases in size of lakes, a decrease in the area of warm,
shallow, continental shelves and carbonate banks, and shifts in ocean currents and fronts.

Flora and Fauna


Ninety percent of the animals represented by Quaternary fossils were recognized by

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Charles Lyell as being similar to modern forms. Many genera and even species of shellfish,
insects, marine microfossils, and terrestrial mammals living today are similar or identical to
their Pleistocene ancestors. However, many Pleistocene fossils demonstrate spectacular

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differences. For example, sabre-toothed cats, woolly mammoths, and cave bears are widely
known from museum exhibits and popular literature but are extinct today. Expansion of
some environments, such as vast dry steppe grasslands, were favourable areas for bison,
horses, antelopes, and their predators. Some species with modern relatives, including the
woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, were clearly adapted to the cold tundra regions
because of their heavy fur. Some, such as the modern musk ox, would have been right at
home.
The Pleistocene is generally recognized as a time of gigantism in terrestrial mammals.
The causes for such gigantism are not completely understood, but they most likely include
a response to colder conditions and an improved ability to resist predators and reach food
higher on shrubs or buried beneath snow. Examples of giant Pleistocene mammals include
the giant beaver, giant sloth, stag-moose, dire wolf, giant short-faced bear of the New
World, and cave bear of the Old World. The woolly mammoth and mastodon are rivaled in
size only by modern elephants. Other animals displayed extremes in body architecture, for
example, the huge canine teeth of sabre-toothed cats. It is suggested that an arms race
between predators and their prey led to these extreme developments.
Whereas unusually large animals capture peoples imaginations, plant fossils are often
the workhorse of Quaternary scientists. Pollen is one of the most important tools of
correlation in terrestrial settings, and it is often used to extend knowledge from well-dated
sequences to less clear situations. Fossil pollen is particularly useful because it is almost
indestructible when trapped in lake and bog sediments. Pollen is representative of local and
regional plant communities and is diagnostic of humid versus dry periods and temperature
changes. Changing patterns of pollen can thus trace deglaciation and shifts in vegetation
zones. Unlike animals, plants do not migrate; however, plant assemblages gradually adjust
to long-term changes in humidity and temperature. The classic pollen assemblages of
northern Europe have long been used to subdivide the latest Pleistocene and Holocene
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epochs. In southern Scandinavia these zones track abrupt shifts such as the Younger Dryas
cooling and the gradual early Holocene change from boreal to warmer climate assemblages.
There were alterations in the abundance of various plants during the changes, and many

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environments typical of deglaciation or the early Holocene would have looked quite
different from the groups that occupy relatively similar climate zones today. For example, a
fossil site in Pennsylvania dating to about 12,500 years ago records an environment of open
land with scattered spruce, pine, and birch trees, bearing some aspects of tundra and some
of prairie. No modern counterparts to this mixed environment exist today. Pollen
compilations in North America track spruce, oak, pine, maple, and other species in a
cinematic series of diagrams showing these changes over the past 18,000 years.
An expansion of dry shortgrass prairie in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains
may have put tallgrass grazers such as horses and camels at a disadvantage compared with
bison. On the other hand, expansion of lakes spread many fishes to new sites, some of
which are found today in refugia of small ponds that remained as the connected glacial
lakes retreated. One extreme example is the spread of the prickly sculpin across the
Continental Divide in British Columbia. This fish was able to move from the south and
west-flowing Fraser River to the north and east-flowing Parsnip River, apparently as a
consequence of ice that temporarily dammed the Fraser.
Evolution in mollusks can be tracked in Pleistocene deposits on the coastal plains of
the eastern and southern United States, around the Baltic Sea, and other gently sloping
continental margins. It is likely that changing sea levels and shifts of marine regions played
a part in the evolutionary pressure. For example, the present U.S. East Coast can be divided
at prominent sites such as Cape Hatteras and Georges Bank, where biogeographic regions
are controlled by coastal currents, primarily owing to water temperature. At times during
the Pleistocene, subtropical conditions extended to the Carolinas and even Virginia. These
periods alternated with cooler-than-normal conditions. The rapid shifts in sea level and
latitudinal ecosystems created disturbance and mixing of different ecological assemblages,
which in turn accelerated evolutionary pressure.
Ice age extinctions were not democratic. Most of the animals that became extinct at
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the end of the Pleistocene were large, and both herbivores and carnivores were affected.
This is particularly true in North and South America as well as Australia. Many hypotheses
have been proposed for this record, but the prehistoric overkill hypothesis blames human

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hunting for the demise of large animals wherever humans arrived during the past 40,000 to
13,000 years. This concept envisions bands of human hunters sweeping south into the new
lands, meeting animals unafraid of these unfamiliar creatures. There are many objections to
this theory, including the lack of sufficient linkage between the hunters and the hunted in
the archaeological record, the likely small numbers of human hunters, and the survival of
bison and other large species. Most important, however, is that the record of decline and
extinction in many cases precedes evidence for humans in the New World and Australia.
Other likely causes for extinction include loss or change of habitats, direct climatic effects,
and changes in the length and intensity of summer and winter conditions. Predators that
went extinct in the latest Pleistocene and early Holocene epochs include the dire wolf,
American lion, sabre-toothed cat, American cheetah, and short-faced bear. Extinct grazers
and browsers include mammoths and mastodons, shrub oxen, woodland musk oxen,
camels, llamas, two genera of deer, two genera of pronghorn antelope, stag-moose, and five
species of Pleistocene horses. Horses did not return to the New World until shipped across
the Atlantic by the Spanish conquistadors.

Human Evolution
American paleontologist Elisabeth Vrba and other scientists have suggested that

climate changes 2.5 million years ago accelerated the evolution of hominins (members of
the human lineage), giving rise to our genus, Homo. The details of this process, and the
exact pathways of ancestors and descendants, are highly controversial (see human
evolution). Even so, most paleoanthropologists and archaeologists believe that a shift from
forests to drier savanna lands in Africa imposed evolutionary pressures that favoured an
upright stance and ability to run and walk long distances. This posture freed the hands for
grasping and made possible the eventual use of tools. Homo fossils suggest a migration out
of Africa to China and Java as early as 1.8 million years ago during the middle of the
Pleistocene. This Out of Africa theory is now interpreted as multiple events over many
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millennia. H. erectus was well established in eastern and southeastern Asia by one million
years ago. Another distinctive human precursor (H. antecessor) arrived in Atapuerca, Spain,
by 800,000 years ago. A human ancestor named H. heidelbergensis is found from sites in

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Africa, Europe, and possibly Asia. These fossils date to between 600,000 and 200,000 years
ago. There is no more controversial subject in this field than the identity and fate of the next
major group, the Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis), who lived between 200,000 and
30,000 years ago in Europe and western Asia. Most recent work suggests that Neanderthals
were not the direct ancestors of modern humans. Both H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens
may have evolved from H. heidelbergensis.

Modern humans (H. sapiens) first appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago. They
arrived in the Middle East about 100,000 years ago, apparently living in the same
environmental settings as the Neanderthals. By 45,00043,000 years ago, modern humans
had begun to settle in Europe, but in less than 10,000 years they supplanted Neanderthals
completely. H. sapiens also spread into Asia and across the narrow seaways of Java, the
Sunda Islands, and New Guinea to Australia by at least 50,000 years ago. Spread of humans
into the New World was delayed until possibly as late as 14,00013,300 years ago,
although there is evidence for earlier colonization. A wealth of evidence is available in
Europe
for the development of human technology and culture during the Upper Paleolithic
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through Neolithic cultural stages, ranging from the skillfully crafted stone, bone, and
wooden tools found in many locations to rare but revealing cave art. These artifacts can be
interpreted in various ways, but they clearly were the product of intelligent and emotionally
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complex humans.
It is probably no coincidence that after the strictures imposed by cold and rapidly
changing Pleistocene climates and landscapes, human civilization and recorded history
arose during the more amenable climate of the Holocene. However, even in these quieter
times, vast climate and sea-level disruptions have occurred. In the late 1990s evidence of
catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea was discovered. The event took place approximately
8,000 years ago and would have flooded settlements and displaced peoples, possibly
accelerating the dispersal of Neolithic foragers and farmers into Europe.
Vivid cave paintings, such as those in Lascaux, France, as well as rock engravings in
Australia and many other parts of the world, depict bison, antelope, horse, mammoth, and
other animals with which humans interacted during the Late Pleistocene. Many tools were
obviously intended for hunting both large and small game. Other tools are interpreted as
specialized scrapers for hides and awls for sewing skins. Rare finds of mammoth and other
animals with stone points embedded in the bones or closely associated with the skeletons
attest to the hunting of animals. In addition, camps in Siberia have tent circles composed of
woolly mammoth jaws and tusks. These could have come from either hunted or scavenged
animals. Like Stone Age peoples known from recent centuries, these hunter-gatherers used
the meat, bones, hides, and sinews of animals, along with many plants, for food, tools, and
shelter. It is clear that these animal resources were critical to survival, especially in the cold
regions.

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