| Geology 105 - Paleontology | ||||||
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1. What does the accompanying graph (to be provided) tell you about the growth pattern and rate of this fossil organism?
2. Describe three different sources of variation within a population and give an example of how to recognize each one in fossil organisms.
3. List and describe at least five characteristics of a good index fossil.
4. Illustrate and define each of these kinds of zones: taxon range zone, interval zone, concurrent range zone, assemblage zone.
5. Explain each of these modes of growth and describe how that growth mode affects information about the organism that can be deduced from the fossil record.
6. Why do most organisms exhibit anisometric growth?
7. What does variation in carbon isotopes and oxygen isotopes tell us about ancient oceans? Be specific.
8. Give five reasons why biostratigraphic correlations may not represent true time correlations.
9. Use the given size-frequency graph to predict the likely mortality pattern of this fossil population (high juvenile mortality, constant mortality, increasing mortality, threshold mortality). How would the living population differ from the size-frequency graph? Describe three factors other than population structure which affect the size-frequency distribution of the fossil assemblage.
1. Describe how carbon and oxygen stable isotope ratios vary between and within marine and terrestrial environments. Use diagrams to illustrate your answer. What kinds of information can you determine from oxygen isotopes? from carbon isotopes?
2. Dinosaurs have been found in Alaska, which was at pretty high latitudes during the Mesozoic. This discovery has some implications for the debate over whether dinos were warm-blooded. Suppose you are the paleobiogeochemist (how's that for a job title?) in charge of investigating a duck-billed dinosaur skeleton recovered from Alaska. What information could you extract from this skeleton by analyzing oxygen and carbon isotope ratios? Be specific about what kind of information can be determined from which element (carbon or oxygen). Remember, you are interested in dinosaurs (i.e., do not include in your discussion uses of isotopes that are irrelevant to dinosaurs).
3. The diagram below shows the ranges of fossils collected in the Podunk Sandstone and Durnit Shale in the Middle-of-Nowhere Range. Fossil C was abundant everywhere it was found; the other fossils were much rarer.
a. Devise a zonation for the Middle-of-Nowhere Range based upon these fossils (you can draw it right on the diagram). Name each zone after one of the fossil species found there.
b. Identify what kind of zone each of your zones is.
c. Identify which zonal boundaries you have the most confidence in, and which you have the least confidence in. Cite your reasons for your confidence or lack thereof.
d. Give at least 5 reasons why the bottom of the range of species B may not be accurate.
e. How would your zonation change if you knew that species A and B are benthic? Why?