BIOLOGY 101 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Carl Linnaeus, James Hutton, Continental Drift
Document Summary
Physiological time: less than a second, a minute, hour, day, month. Ontogenetic time: year, decade, century, millennium, 10,000 years. Geologic time: million years, 10 my, 100 my, 1000 my. Relative time scale: based on the sequence of the geological layering of the rocks and the evolution of life. Radiometric time scale: based on natural radioactivity of chemical elements found in some rocks. More accurate, but can be affected by human error, is expensive. James hutton: scottish geologist, formalized idea that you can classify rocks according to relative age. Also explained natural phenomena by rock cycle (see later notes) William smith: collected and cataloged fossils in england and discovered that certain layers contain fossils unique to that layer, leading to the discovery of the . Key index fossil: identifies one particular layer of rock wherever it might be located geographically, allowing one to conclude that that specific layer is only found in a specific location or time period.
