Glosario de paleontología
Términos y definiciones esenciales de paleontología y ciencia de los dinosaurios.
Stratigraphy & Dating
15 términosTérminos relacionados con el tiempo geológico, capas de roca y métodos para determinar la edad de los fósiles.
Taphonomy
The study of what happens to organisms after death, including decay, burial, and fossilization processes. …
Unconformity
A surface representing a gap in the geological record where erosion or non-deposition occurred. Unconformities …
Index Fossil
A fossil of an organism that lived for a short, well-defined time period and is …
Mesozoic Era
The Age of Reptiles spanning 252 to 66 million years ago. Divided into three periods: …
Facies
A body of rock with characteristic features reflecting the environment in which it was deposited. …
Formation
A distinct rock unit with consistent characteristics, often named for the location where it was …
Impact Winter
The hypothesized period of global cooling following the Chicxulub asteroid impact, caused by dust and …
Iridium Anomaly
An unusually high concentration of the element iridium in geological layers corresponding to the K-Pg …
K-Pg Boundary
The geological boundary marking the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction 66 million years ago. An asteroid impact …
Lagerstätte
An exceptional fossil deposit with unusually high preservation quality or quantity. The Yixian Formation in …
Assemblage Zone
A stratigraphic interval characterized by a specific combination of fossil taxa. Dinosaur assemblage zones help …
Biostratigraphy
The use of fossil organisms to date and correlate rock layers. Index fossils that lived …
Correlation
The process of matching rock layers of the same age from different locations. Paleontologists use …
Radiometric Dating
Methods using the decay of radioactive isotopes to determine the absolute age of rocks and …
Superposition
The principle that in undisturbed rock sequences, lower layers are older than upper layers. This …