AI Explain

• Indigenous Peoples' Impact


  The arrival of European settlers and traders led to the displacement of indigenous peoples from their traditional territories, disrupting their trade networks and introducing new diseases.
• Rock formations


  • Deposited in layers from the oldest to the youngest on the bottom
• Paleontologists


  Scientists who study early life forms from animal and plant fossils
• The Burgess Shale Fossil Beds have preserved the soft tissue of many species, allowing scientists to study these specimens in detail
• Fossils look much the same as they did a half billion years ago
• Geologic time intervals


  • Precambrian Era: 4600 to 600 millions of years ago
  • Paleozoic Era
  • Mesozoic Era: 225 to 65 millions of years ago
  • Cenozoic Era: 65 millions of years ago to present day
• All that science knows about the ancient past, it has learned from rock and fossil records
• Scientists estimate that Earth is about 4.6 billion years old
• The first simple organisms and first soft-bodied animals appeared during the Precambrian Era
• The first reptiles, large land animals, insects, large land plants and fish with jaws appeared during the Paleozoic Era
• Dinosaurs ruled and became extinct during the Mesozoic Era. The first flowering plants, birds and mammals appeared
• In the Cenozoic Era was the appearance of most modern species, many more species of mammals, first grasses, and first human-like species (about 2-3 millions of years ago)
• Chemical weathering


  • Acid rain
  • Soda spilled on the road
• Biological weathering


  • Plants growing through cement
  • Animals burrowing tunnels in the ground
• Sediment


  Silt, sand, mud, and gravel carried by flowing rivers
• Deposition


  Process of sediments being deposited on surface features
• Landforms created by running water

  • Sudden and fast movements of rocks and soil down a slope
  • Moving masses of ice and snow
• Bedrock


  Layer of solid rock beneath the loose rock fragments
• Minerals


  Pure, naturally occurring solid materials that are the building blocks of rock
• Properties of minerals


  • Color
  • Luster
  • Streak
  • Cleavage and fracture
  • Mohs hardness
• Color alone is not enough to identify a mineral</b>
• Igneous rocks


  Rocks that form from hot, molten rock
• Igneous rocks


  • Obsidian
  • Pumice
  • Pegmatite
  • Basalt
• Intrusive igneous rock


  Igneous rock formed from magma that cooled and hardened beneath the surface
• Extrusive igneous rock


  Igneous rock that was formed from lava cooling on Earth's surface
• Sedimentary rocks


  Layers of rock that form when small pieces of rock are carried by water or wind and settle or sink down in water onto the rocks below them
• Sedimentary rocks


  • Limestone
  • Shale
  • Conglomerate
  • Sandstone
• Metamorphic rocks


  Rocks that have been changed because of intense pressure and heat within Earth's interior
• Metamorphic rocks


  • Gneiss
  • Marble
  • Schist
  • Quartzite
  • Slate
• Rock cycle


  Process by which rock is changed from one class to another
• The Precambrian rock formation underlies all of Alberta, though it is only exposed in the northeast corner of the province. It is made up of igneus and metamorphic rocks
• The Interior Plain of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba is made up of various layers of sedimentary rock that are between 544 million and 65 million years old
• Continental drift


  Alfred Wegener's hypothesis, now accepted, of the movement of continental land masses
• At one time all continents were joined together in a single land mass, called Pangaea
• Wegener noticed that several fossils of similar plants and animals had been found on different continents
• Wegener discovered the geology had found the same kind of rocks on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and the mountain range that ran through Britain and Norway matched the Appalachians in eastern North America
• The fossils of Glossopteris plants, which were ferns, could not have travelled across the ocean
• The folded, tilted or vertically oriented sedimentary rock layers show that glaciers once covered this land
• The ancient tropical forests produced the coal deposits which seem to have once been connected
• Plate tectonics


  The idea that the continental crust is broken up into large areas called plates, all plates are moving very slowly in various directions