Daily Assignment [3/11 Wednesday]

Essential Question
What can fossils tell us about evolution?

Essential Objectives
1. I can explain how fossils form and what they tell us about geologic time of Earth’s
history.
2. I can analyse and interpret data to identify patterns and construct scientific explanation
of how the fossil record provide information about the history of life on Earth.

Fossil Record

 Fossils can be used to learn about

some of the changes that occurred in
the past.

 How can we learn about the ages of

fossils?

 We can learn about the age of a fossil

by looking at rock layers.

 The fossil at the bottom of the image

were much older than the fossils at the top.

 The fossil record is made up of all the fossils ever discovered on Earth. It contains
millions of fossils that represent thousands of species.

 The fossil record provides evidence that species have changed over time. Using the
fossil record, scientists are able to determine when an organism lived.

 Scientists cannot date most fossils directly. Instead, they date the rocks the fossils are
embedded inside.

 Rocks erode or are recycled over time. However, scientists can determine ages for most
of Earth’s rocks.

Relative vs absolute dating

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  In relative-dating, scientists determine the relative order in which rock layers were
deposited. In an undisturbed rock formation, the bottom layers are oldest and the top
layers are youngest.

 Relative-dating helps scientists determine the relative order in which species have
appeared on Earth over time.

 In absolute-dating, scientists take advantage of radioactive decay, to learn a rock’s

absolute age, or it’s age in years.

Geologic time

 Evidence of microscopic, unicellular organisms has been

found in rocks 3.4 billion years old.

 The geologic time scale is a chart that divides Earth’s

history into different time units.

 The longest time units in the geologic time scale are eons.
Earth’s most recent eon- the Phanerozoic eon is
subdivided into three eras.

 When scientists began developing the geologic time scale

in the 1800s, they did not have absolute-age dating
methods.

 To mark time boundaries, they used fossils to mark time.

They knew that different rock layers contained different
types of fossils.

 Often, a type of fossil found in one rock layer did not

appear in layers above it. Even more surprising, entire
collections of fossils in one layer were sometimes absent
from layers above them.

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