RIO Unit 8 Chapter 17 Reading Guide Name: _______________________

1. Define the following terms:

a. Paleontologist

b. Fossil record

c. Extinct

d. Relative dating

e. Index fossil

f. Half-life

g. Radioactive dating

h. Geologic time scale

i. Era

j. Period

2. Explain how fossils form.

3. Why is the fossil record described as an incomplete record of life’s history?

4. What information do relative dating and radioactive dating provide about fossils?

5. What are the main divisions of the geologic time scale?

6. Using the model in figure 17-6, about what time did life appear? The first plants? The first humans?
RIO Unit 8 Chapter 17 Reading Guide Name: _______________________

7. Define the following terms:

a. Proteinoid microsphere

b. Microfossil

c. Endosymbiotic theory

8. What substances made up Earth’s early atmosphere?

9. Why did the early Earth not have oceans?

10. Explain Miller & Urey’s experiment.

11. What did Miller & Urey’s experiments show?

12. How are proteinoid microspheres similar to cells? How are they different?

13. How might RNA have stored genetic information?

14. What occurred when oxygen was added to Earth’s atmosphere?

15. What process added oxygen to Earth’s atmosphere?

RIO Unit 8 Chapter 17 Reading Guide Name: _______________________

16. Draw how eukaryotic cells arose from living communities formed by prokaryotic organisms.

17. Explain how sexual reproduction produces genetic variation while asexual reproduction does not.

18. Define mass extinction.

19. What were the characteristic forms of life in the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras?
RIO Unit 8 Chapter 17 Reading Guide Name: _______________________

20. What is the “Cambrian Explosion”?

21. Which of today’s animals do eurypterids resemble?

22. When did flowering plants evolve?

23. How might the change to a colder climate have affected different types of organisms?

24. Define the following terms:

a. Macroevolution

b. Adaptive radiation

c. Convergent evolution

d. Coevolution

e. Punctuated equilibrium

25. According to the diagram in figure 17-22, which mammal group is most closely related to elephants?

26. How did sharks and dolphins come to resemble one another?

27. How might natural selection bring about the evolution of the orchid and the moth?

28. How do the diagrams in figure 17-25 illustrate gradualism and punctuated equilibrium?

29. How might hox genes contribute to variation?

30. What role have mass extinctions played in the history of life?