BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES
EFFECTS OF THE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS
TYPES OF ROCKS
CONTINENTAL DRIFT
FORMATION OF ROCKS
MASSIVE EXTINTION ON EARTH
TECTONIC PLATES
FOSSIL RECORD
GEOLOGIACAL PROCESSES
Ordovician-silurian Extinction:
440 million years ago
Small marine organisms died out.
Devonian Extinction:
365 million years ago
Many tropical marine species went extinct.
Permian-triassic Extinction:
250 million years ago
The largest mass extinction event in Earth's history affected a range of species, including many vertebrates.
Triassic-jurassic Extinction:
210 million years ago
The extinction of other vertebrate species on land allowed dinosaurs to flourish.
Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction:
65 Million Years Ago
The extinction wiped out some 50 percent of plants and animals.
INTERNAL GEOLOGICAL AGENTS
EXTERNAL GEOLOGICAL AGENTS
The set of geographical features that we can contemplate on the earth's surface, such as mountains, slopes, valleys and plateaus, constitute the relief
.
External geological agents can be passive or active:
Passives:
they produce the disintegration of the rock, but they do not mobilize these fragments. They are atmospheric agents: temperature, humidity, oxygen, etc.
Active:
capable of fragmenting a rock and mobilizing the fragments.
They are:
Water. It works in various ways:
Rain: it wears down the ground and tears off small fragments, which are washed away.
Surface continental waters that, in the form of torrents, rivers, etc. They act with different intensity.
The internal geological agents are the internal forces of the planet that cause the deformation of the earth's crust. The most important are:
Volcanoes:
Fissures in the earth's crust that reach deep areas, through which magma is expelled: a mixture of molten materials with variable amounts of water, gases and small solid fragments of rock.
Earthquakes or sixths :
they are sudden movements of the surface layers of the Earth, produced by the fracture and displacement of large rock masses inside the crust
A wide range of animals and plants suddenly became extinct, from small marine organisms to large dinosaurs.
Species go extinct all the time. Scientists estimate that at least 99.9 percent of all species of plants and animals that ever lived are now extinct. Therefore, the disappearance of dinosaurs around 65 million years ago would not be especially noteworthy, except for the fact that about 50 percent of all plants and animals live at the same time they also went extinct in what scientists call a mass. extinction
Crystallization
Magma cools either underground or on the surface and hardens into an igneous rock. As the magma cools, different crystals form at different temperatures, undergoing crystallization. For example, the mineral olivine crystallizes out of magma at much higher temperatures than quartz. The rate of cooling determines how much time the crystals will have to form. Slow cooling produces larger crystals.
Erosion and Sedimentation
Weathering wears rocks at the Earth’s surface down into smaller pieces. The small fragments are called sediments. Running water, ice, and gravity all transport these sediments from one place to another by erosion. During sedimentation, the sediments are laid down or deposited. In order to form a sedimentary rock, the accumulated sediment must become compacted and cemented together.
Metamorphism
When a rock is exposed to extreme heat and pressure within the Earth but does not melt, the rock becomes metamorphosed. Metamorphism may change the mineral composition and the texture of the rock. For that reason, a metamorphic rock may have a new mineral composition and/or texture.
Processes of the Rock Cycle
Several processes can turn one type of rock into another type of rock. The key processes of the rock cycle are crystallization, erosion and sedimentation, and metamorphism.
There are three kinds of rock: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.
Igneous rocks
form when molten rock (magma or lava) cools and solidifies.
Sedimentary rocks
originate when particles settle out of water or air, or by precipitation of minerals from water. They accumulate in layers.
Metamorphic rocks
result when existing rocks are changed by heat, pressure, or reactive fluids, such as hot, mineral-laden water. Most rocks are made of minerals containing silicon and oxygen, the most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust
This is the name given to the phenomenon by which the plates that support the continents move throughout millions of years of the Earth's geological history. This movement is due to the continual flow of new material from the mantle below the oceanic crust.
The word fossil comes from the Latin fossĭlis, which in turn derives from the verb fodere, which means 'to excavate'.
Fossils are generally found in sedimentary rocks. For a fossil to form, the organism must go through a physical-chemical process called fossilization. This process petrifies the organism after it is buried and conserves it for a long time in the earth's crust.
The importance of fossil findings and their study is that they serve to reconstruct the natural history of the world, collecting data and clues of the organisms that exist in remote times, such as the finding of dinosaur fossils.
Tectonic plates are fragments of the lithosphere, made up of the upper part of the upper mantle and the earth's crust, that behave as a strong, relatively cold and rigid layer. The lithospheric plates are thinnest in the oceans, where their thickness varies from a few kilometers in the mid-ocean ridges to 100 kilometers in the deep ocean basins.
Volcanic eruptions can profoundly change the landscape, initially through destructive processes (flank faults and caldera formation) and constructive processes (lava flows, domes, and pyroclastic deposits), which destroy vegetation and change the physical nature of the landscape. surface (e.g. porosity, permeability, and chemistry)
Statistical analyzes, based on chi-square tests, revealed that there was a more extensive forest cover, regardless of the succession stage, in steeper areas located at higher altitudes, but without influence of the slope. Likewise, it was not evidenced that these results could have been influenced by the distance to roads or urban areas or with respect to permanent preservation areas. The relief seems to indirectly influence the forest cover, since the use of agricultural land is preferably carried out in flatter and lower areas.
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