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Chapter 3: What the Rocks Say – How Geology and Paleontology Reveal the History of Life
Objectives

 Describe how radioactive elements are used to determine the age of

rocks.

 Use the strontium-rubidium system to determine the age of a rock.

 Explain how the fossil record relates to patterns of fossilization.
 Explain how behaviors observed today can be used to understand

plants and animals of the past.

 Explain how isotopes and biomarkers can be used to examine past

habitats.

 Discuss why different lines of evidence are important in examining

Earth’s history.

 Describe the earliest forms of life on Earth.

 Describe the origins of multicellular life.
 Evaluate the contributions Ediacaran and trilobite fossils have made

to our understanding of animal evolution.

 Define tetrapods, and discuss their significance to human evolution.

 Give one potential explanation for the patterns of diversity observed

in animal and plant species alive today

 What are stromatolites, and why are they important to the study of evolution?
o Stromatolites are layered mats of bacteria. They contain evidence of the age of the earth, and
evidence that they grew from a shallow ocean.

3.1 The Great Age-of-the-Earth Debate

The following three people in history championed different hypotheses about the age of the Earth (Ussher isn’t
in the textbook but is the foundation for the popular belief that the Earth is only a few thousand years old).

Fill out the following information based on the reading material on p. 54 – 56:

Historical Figure Estimated Age of Earth Evidence Used

1. James P. Ussher (1581 – Created on October 23, 4004 Biblical texts of who fathered
1656), archbishop of B.C. whom, to the dates of Adam and
Northern Ireland Eve in the Book of Genesis
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2. Charles Darwin Created billions of years ago Studying how sediments

accumulate on riverbanks, Darwin
estimated a small stretch of hills
and valleys in Southeast England
to be 300 million years old, and
with that estimate gave an
estimate to the world.

3. William Thomson Less than 20 million years old Careful measurement of Earth’s
heat loss using rocks found in
mines, which stay the same
temperature year round.

Fig. 3.3 William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824

– 1907), a leading nineteenth-century
physicist.

He calculated Earth’s rate of heat loss to

predict the age of the Earth.

 More independent lines of evidence were compiled in the last 150 years to converge on one of these
three estimates (one of these, especially, being the subject of the next heading below).
 It was discovered much later that Lord Kelvin’s estimates of Earth’s age were incorrect. Why was this?
o Because he incorrectly assumed that the Earth didn’t heat up with other methods besides its
earlier molten nature. The earth also heats up due to trapping heat from the sun with its
atmosphere, which is something his calculation doesn’t take into account.

o (BTW, radioactive decay also produces another source of heat from deep within Earth’s
surface, which also causes rocks to be too warm for Kelvin’s calculations).

3.2 A Curious Lack of Radioactivity

 Do all radioactive isotopes have the same half-life? How does this affect which isotopes are present
in Earth’s geological strata?
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o Not all radioactive isotopes have the same half, they all have different rates of occurrence.
Since they decay in a fixed amount of time, scientists can use them to predict the age of the
rock. This affects the isotopes present in the strata based on the age of the earth.

 All of the isotopes that geologists have found have half-lives of over __80 milion years
old_____________, which is much too old to be consistent with Kelvin’s estimated age of the Earth at
20 million years old.

 Not only have scientists found only radioisotopes of extremely old half-lives in Earth’s rocks, but they
can also estimate the age of a sample of rock by using a radioactive isotope’s decay rate and
mathematical equations. This method of dating precise ages of rocks is known as ______radiometric
dating________________.
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3.3 A Vast Museum

 Take a look at Figure 3.4 – at the Geologic Time Scale.
How were the time blocks and dates determined?
o The time blocks were determined with
radiometric dating of rocks all over the world.
Divided by significant geological events, such as
mass extinctions, significant climate changes, or
formation of mountain ranges.

 Scientists since Darwin’s time have confirmed Darwin’s

conclusion that the fossil record is far from complete.
Why is this?
o Because not every species that has ever lived
can successfully fossilize.

 How are fossils formed and discovered?

o Fossils are formed from a rapid engulfment of a
species before it is eaten by predators and
bacteria. Then rock and molecules fill in the gap
where the bones and tissue once were.
Discovered by unearthing the ground.

 Describe how fossils are usually dated by scientists.

Why can’t they usually use the material within the fossil
itself?
o By measuring the age of the rocks around. The material the fossil is made of seldom has
isotopes that can be used to measure their age.

 How is carbon-14 especially useful in dating actual fossils, Fig. 3.4 The geological time scale
and for what time frame is it useful?
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o Carbon-14 is useful for dating fossils because it helps them determine the age of fossils less
than 50,000 years old. Since most organisms produce or eat carbon, their isotopes are useful
and found in plants and animals.

3.4 Bringing Fossils to Life

 How have fossils been used to reconstruct the behavior of extinct organisms? Provide several examples.
o Fossils of two turtles found mating

o Fossil of a marine reptile giving live birth instead of eggs

o Fossil of a fish actively eating a pterodactyl

 What are Lagerstӓtten and how are they useful for deciphering past ecosystems?
o Lagerstatten are well preserved fossils that found themselves decaying in low oxygen
environments. They can decipher past ecosystems by showing the diversity present in them.
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o Describe the Burgess Shale and why it is so

important for understanding early animal evolution.
 The Burgess Shale was a major area where they
discovererd many well preserved species due to its
environment.

 BTW it is in the Burgess Shale where the ancestors can be traced to all known phyla of living animals – all
the major groups of living animals (arthropods, chordates, etc.) existed 505 million years ago!

3.5 Traces of Vanished Biology

 Where did coal come from?

o Coal comes from plants decaying in oxygen poor environments, like swamps.

 What are biomarkers and why are they useful to understanding evolution?
o Biomarkers are molecular molecules that prove biological processes took place, they’re useful in
tracking species’ origins and even certain species.

 How have carbon isotopes helped scientists reconstruct ancient ecosystems and diets of past organisms?
o Based on the ratio of carbon isotopes found within them, scientists can determine what their diets
were, because plants carry differing isotopes, and thus carry different molecular compositions.

 How did scientists use carbon isotope ratios to reflect the diet of the ancestors to humans?
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o Tooth enamel found in our earliest hominins had a lower ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12, which
determined that earlier humans ate a diet rich in plants. The homo sapien fossils acquired a higher
ratio of c4, which shows a diet that ate mammals.

3.6 Reading the Record: First Life

Fig. 3.13:

Describe what the y-axis stands

for in this figure:

In one sentence, explain what the

graph means:

Y-axis stands for the composition of the teeth or generally the fossil, this determines their diets;
whether they included shrubbery or grasses.

The graph means to show the hominin transition from a more plant based diet to a diet consisting of
both plants and animals

3.7 Early Signatures of life

 Describe three lines of evidence scientists are using to ascertain the earliest forms of life.
o In a rock that had an isotope composition consistent with a 4.1 year billion-year-old rock. They
found a carbon composition similar to the ones found in living creatures today.

o Stromatolites have evidence of mats of bacteria forming on rock that dates back to
Precambrian age and further.

o Microbial fossils in Aldwood found to be 4.1 billion years old.

 Why are modern stromatolites so rare on Earth today?

o Bacterial matrixes are seldom fossilized because they are normally consumed by species.

3.8 The Rise of Life

 What are the three domains of living organisms? Eukarya, Archea, and Bacteria
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 What happened to the atmosphere at the time that coincides with the first cyanobacteria fossils (about

2.3 – 2.6 billion years ago)? Emergence of oxygen in the atmosphere.

 What signs in the fossil record indicate the emergence of Eukarya (about 1.8 bya)? Emergence of

organisms 100 times bigger than bacteria and other organisms.

 Today our attention may be distracted by animals and plants, but the world remains dominated by

____microbes____________.

3.9 Life Gets Big

 One of the most dramatic transitions in

evolution was the origin of
______multicellular
organisms____________.

 Multicellular life evolved (circle one: once /

more than once).

 These major transitions began around 2.1

billion years ago.
o Macroscopic fossils with an unknown placement in the phylogenetic tree
o Macr

3.10 The Dawn of the Animal Kingdom

 What do the earliest animal fossils appear like?

o Appear like sponges, earliest one being 600 million years of age.
o

 Compare and contrast the Cambrian and Ediacaran fauna. Which group arrived first?
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o The Ediacaran fauna arrived first.

o Cambrian fauna had the emergence of animals exhibiting movement

o Ediacaran fauna had the first emergence of multicellularity

o Cambrian fauna also had the first hierarchy of predators.

3.11 Climbing Ashore

 The first life forms on land were (circle one: prokaryotes, fungi, plants, animals)
 How did fungi and plants help each other colonize land?
o Fungi converted dead plants to soil, which helped living plants with a ground to produce
more plants.

 Which animals colonized land first, invertebrates or vertebrates?

 What are tetrapods and when did they evolve?
o Tetrapods are vertebrated animals, they evolved about 370 million years ago.

3.12 Recent Arrivals

 What are teleosts?
o A lineage of ancient fish that accounts for the majority of the fish population today.
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o Were teleosts common during the time that vertebrates moved to land?
 They were not present 350 million years ago. They came to be much later.
 What are synapsids?
o Synapsids are a lineage of tetrapods that
evolved 300 million years ago. Distinguishable
feature includes the opening of the skull behind
the eyes.

 Describe three major changes that occurred in the

evolution of land plants.
o Evolution of flowering plants.
o Less reliance on water for gamete interchange.
o Change in the composition of the atmosphere, which created the dominance of grassland as the
dominant plant.

 What are hominins?

o Hominins are a lineage of human like
creatures that resemble our stature.

o How long have humans been around?

o The oldest fossil that resemble us were found to be 2 million years old

Box 3.2 The Present and the Past in Science

 Read this box and describe one example of how scientists can test predictions about the past.
o Reading the isotopic composition of rocks determined a prediction of the age of the earth.
o Mass extinctions can be predicted by the amount of oxygen present in the composition of the rocks
from the time.
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