EESA06H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Decay Product, Lead, Trilobite
Introduction to Planet Earth
February 29th, 2016
Lecture 8: Geologic Time: How do we date the past? Part 1
Student: I’m here on behalf of the Academic Career center and some of you are probably
confused on what program you want to choose. We have many support services here on campus.
So March is choosing your program month. Our office is right beside this class here and there are
various workshops you can attend. Feel free to reach out to different faculty members if you
have something you want to pursue.
*Note: Read chapters 5,6,7,8,9,10,11 but concentrate on Ch.19 for mid-term.
Prof: Keep an eye out on the stuff I posted on blackboard. What you really need to know for
mid-term is chapters 1 to 4 and 19 and the lectures. I’ll be posting more information on that
later on in the week.
Prof: We talked a lot of geology and about the earth’s surface. Now we’re going to talk about
Geologic time. So how can we tell how old a fossil is? We didn’t have the ability to absolute date
it until recently. We’re going to talk about relative age dating and chemical techniques to
provide absolute age dating.
Terms to Remember
- Strata
o layers of rocks
- Stratigraphy
o the study of geology that concerns with the age of rocks; the study of earth’s
history revealed by strata
- Relative age vs absolute age
- Accommodation
o we need the crust to be sinking; subsiding
o subsidence of crust
- Conformable succession
o where those layers sit on each other like a continuous record of environments;
accumulating information about the earths surface
- Unconformable succession
o Where they are major time breaks within the succession (e.g. more gaps than
records); the rock record is incomplete (major gaps)
- Index fossils and faunal succession
o Index fossils are organisms that evolve very quickly; be very specific of the time
age they live in
o Faunal succession is based on the observation that these fossils succeed each
other vertically in a specific reliable order that can be identified over wide
horizontal distances
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Student: i"m here on behalf of the academic career center and some of you are probably confused on what program you want to choose. We have many support services here on campus. Our office is right beside this class here and there are various workshops you can attend. Feel free to reach out to different faculty members if you have something you want to pursue. *note: read chapters 5,6,7,8,9,10,11 but concentrate on ch. 19 for mid-term. Prof: keep an eye out on the stuff i posted on blackboard. What you really need to know for mid-term is chapters 1 to 4 and 19 and the lectures. I"ll be posting more information on that later on in the week. Prof: we talked a lot of geology and about the earth"s surface. We didn"t have the ability to absolute date it until recently. We"re going to talk about relative age dating and chemical techniques to provide absolute age dating.
