Term
| Name the five geologic resources found in Texas |
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Definition
| Petroleum, coal, minerals, groundwater, fertile soils |
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Term
| Rocks found in Texas represent how many years of Earth's history? |
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Definition
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Term
| Explain the principle of uniformitarianism. |
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Definition
| physical processes we observe operating today also operated in the past at comparable rates, "the present is the key to the past," discovered by James Hutton in the 1700's |
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Term
| Explain the difference between relative ages and numerical ages. |
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Definition
| relative ages are based on the succession of rock layers/fossils and numerical age is the rocks absolute age assigned by a number |
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Term
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Definition
| in a sequence of sedimentary rock layers, each layer must be younger than the one below, sediment layers accumulate with the bottom layer being the oldest and top the youngest |
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Term
| In all cases, Fossilization involves the burial and preservation of an organism or the trace of an organism. Name a few cases in which fossilization can occur. |
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Definition
| fossil seashells buried by sediment settling in the sea, insepcts trapped in tree sap (amber), mammoths drowed in the muck of a tar pit |
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Term
| Fossils are distinguished by the way in which the organism was fossilized. Name some examples of these categories. |
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Definition
| frozen or dried body fossils, body fossils preserved in amber or tar, preserved or replaced bones/teeth/shells, molds, carbonized impressions of bodies, permineralized organisms, trace fossils, chemical fossils, |
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Term
| Explain Fossil correlations. |
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Definition
| to correlate rock units over broad areas, fossils are relied upon to define the relative ages of sedimentary units, used for studies of broad areas because sources of sediments and deopositional environments may change from one location to another |
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