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Geology 112 Exam 1 Review Concepts
Exam will cover material for the first part of the course.
Exam format will be short answer style. You can answer the questions
with an outline /short answer/sketch-concise answers and well-labeled
sketches are best.
Take a look at the outlines on the webpage as well as your notes and the
readings from the book.
Here is a list of the main topics we have covered thus far:
 Unconformities. What they are, what do they look like.
 Relative Age dating: Stratigraphic principles
 Absolute age dating: Half-life, geologically useful geologic
isotopes, assumptions underlying the use of absolute age dating,
what types of rocks are used.
 How isotopic dating is used to constrain the geologic time scale.
 Paleomagnetism: what types of rocks are used, what the basic
premise is for using it as a dating tool, how it has been used to
confirm sea floor spreading
 Time Scale: Know the eons and eras, numeric age boundaries
between them.
 Currently accepted ages for the earth, oldest minerals, rocks,
fossils
 Carbon Cycle: photosynthesis and respiration. Relationship
between abundances of C and O and their isotopes
 Fossils: what are they and how are they preserved
 What are the main kingdoms of life
 Types of plate boundaries and the features associated with them
 Early history of the earth-oxygen free atmosphere, volcanic
degassing to produce atm. and oceans.
 Greenstone belts and Granulite/Gneiss terranes: early
differentiation of contintental crust.