When you have completed this chapter you should be able to: 1. Describe the various kinds of tectonic movement.
2. List the main steps in the development of the great mountain ranges of the world.
3. Outline the evolution of today's continents from the former supercontinent Pangaea.
4. Distinguish between the lithosphere and the asthenosphere.
5. Explain how ocean-floor spreading accounts for present-day features of the ocean floors.
6. Describe what happens at oceanic-continental, oceanic-oceanic, and continental-continental plate collisions.
7. Identify the San Andreas Fault and indicate its origin.
8. State what is meant by the principle of uniform change.
9. List the four basic principles of historical geology.
10. Describe how radiometric dating is used to find the ages of rocks.
11. Describe how radiocarbon dating is used to find the ages of biological specimens.
12. Explain why animal fossils are more common than plant fossils, and account for the abundance of fossils on the floors of ancient shallow seas.
13. Discuss the various ways in which fossils are useful in geology.
14. Give the basis for the division of geological time into eras, periods, and epochs.
15. List the four major divisions of geological time in order from past to present.
16. Describe the formation of coal and petroleum.
17. Identify dinosaurs and discuss what may have led to their sudden disappearance.
18. Account for the survival of mammals when the dinosaurs disappeared.
19. Discuss the most recent Ice Age and its role in early human history.
20. Explain why overpopulation is the principle hazard facing the world of the future.