Chapter 2: Earth's Earliest Life

Review Questions for Chapter 2

Introduction

• Introducing Fossils (or: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4)
• Lots of Fossil Web Links at West's Geology Directory
• Prof. Cowen's Mini-essay on Biases in the Fossil Record
• Introduction to Images of Insects in Amber
• World of Amber
• 850 Million Year Old Cyanobacteria Fossils in Chert from Australia
• California Fossil Sites
• Ichnology, the Study of Trace Fossils
• A Book by Niles Eldridge et al., Fossils: The Evolution and Extinction of Species. at
  
  

How Paleobiology Works

• Unraveling Geological Time

How Do We Know the Age of a Fossil

• Explanation of Stratigraphy
• An Activity to Teach Relative Dating
• An Archaeologist's Guide to Chronological Dating
• A Christian Perspective on Radiometric Method of Dating
• Lecture Notes on Radiometric Dating
• A Self-Correcting Geological Time Scale Test
• Answers for Geological Time Scale Test
• Berkeley's Web Lift through Time
• Douglas Henderson's Illustrated Geological Time Line
• Dr. Bob's Pnemonic Devices for Remembering Geological Periods
• The Geologic Time Scale from the USGS Website
• The 4,600 Ma Beer and Other Time Scale Analogies
• Don Wise Compiles Problems with the Creationist Geologic Time Scale

Earth's Oldest Rocks

• Only Meteorites Survive from the Hadeon Time
• The Oldest Rocks and Fossils During the Archaen Eon
• If You REALLY Want Details on Life as Detected from Uranium in Archaen Rocks

Earth's Oldest Cells

• Dr. Awramik on the Earliest Microfossils
• Bacteria Fossils
• Cyanobacteria Fossils including Stromatolites
• Dr. Awramik on Stromatolites
• Stromatolites at Shark Bay, W. Australia or here
• Introduction to Living Cyanobacteria
• A Webserver for Cyanobacterial Research: Cyanosite
• Photosynthetic Pigments

Banded Iron Formations (BIFs)

• Good Overview of the Precambrian and BIFs
• Minnesota BIFs

The Oxygen Revolution

• Introduction to the Proterozoic Eon
• The 'Revolution' was REALLY Ancient Global Pollution
• On-line Research Paper on Build-up of Oxygen on Earth
• BSC Courseware Module on Cellular Respiration or Brief Outline Here
• Movie on Fermentation in Yeast
• Comparison of Respiration and Photosynthesis

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The links on this page were first compiled in Fall, 1998, last checked on 9/19/01 and last updated on 6/26/03.
If you find broken links or if you find additional cool sites that are appropriate,
please send them and the Web address for this page to Prof. Eernisse.
This page © D.J. Eernisse, 1998-2003.