Professor Nick Cutter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomhigh2022-10-06 07:43 pm
itsananomaly) wrote in fandomhigh2022-10-06 07:43 pm
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Intro to Palaeontology - Thursday, 1st Period
This week Cutter was not hung over, so as much as he would have liked to have just continued with another movie day, especially with the trip being next week he decided to give his lecture that he had originally intended for last week.
“This week we’re going to begin looking at field work in palaeontology and what’s involved,” Cutter explained as he started that week’s lecture, handing out his usual extensive notes , “we’ll do the practical component when we come back from after the break but for this week I thought we’d start covering the theory and look into the Fossil Record since this is one of the tools that is used to help us identify and understand how old a fossil is,”
“The Fossil Record is the history of life and we can study this through the remains of organisms throughout the geographical time periods in sedimentary rocks,” he continued, “the Fossil Record includes organisms such as bones, teeth, eggs and there are two methods used to help us date a fossil, these are relative dating and absolute dating. Relative dating is where studying the Fossil record can be useful, this is where we study the strata of rocks and you can tell the relative age from the position they were found in the rocks. The higher the rock or fossil was located, means that they are younger in age,”
“Absolute dating is where we use radiometric dating methods to determine how precise age of the rock or fossil,”
“Finally the Fossil Record can help us understand evolutionary links, I mentioned the other week that the Archaeopteryx is an example of understanding the evolution from dinosaurs to birds and the Fossil Record helps us understand this link based on studying the similarities and the features to modern birds,”
“This week we’re going to begin looking at field work in palaeontology and what’s involved,” Cutter explained as he started that week’s lecture, handing out his usual extensive notes , “we’ll do the practical component when we come back from after the break but for this week I thought we’d start covering the theory and look into the Fossil Record since this is one of the tools that is used to help us identify and understand how old a fossil is,”
“The Fossil Record is the history of life and we can study this through the remains of organisms throughout the geographical time periods in sedimentary rocks,” he continued, “the Fossil Record includes organisms such as bones, teeth, eggs and there are two methods used to help us date a fossil, these are relative dating and absolute dating. Relative dating is where studying the Fossil record can be useful, this is where we study the strata of rocks and you can tell the relative age from the position they were found in the rocks. The higher the rock or fossil was located, means that they are younger in age,”
“Absolute dating is where we use radiometric dating methods to determine how precise age of the rock or fossil,”
“Finally the Fossil Record can help us understand evolutionary links, I mentioned the other week that the Archaeopteryx is an example of understanding the evolution from dinosaurs to birds and the Fossil Record helps us understand this link based on studying the similarities and the features to modern birds,”