Rocks, Fossils, & Time

5. The law of fossil ______________ states that fossils change through time.
7. Means "recent animal life".
8. The last _________ ended 10,000 years ago.
14. Represent the remains of once-living organisms.
15. Most fossils are the remains of _____ organisms; that is, they belong to species that are no longer living on Earth.
16. The study of the order and correlation of Earth's rocks.
17. The largest division of geological time.
18. Earth is _____.
19. Means "ancient animal life".
21. A dominant type of life during the Cenozoic era.
23. Broad spans based on the general type of life existing during that time.
24. The kinds of fossils found in rocks of different ages are different because life on Earth has ______________through time.
26. The branch of science devoted to the study of fossils.

1. Means "middle animal life".
2. Layers that had a particular fossil would have formed at the same time.
3. People who study Earth's history use this type of calendar.
4. The father of stratigraphy.
6. Earth is constantly ________________.
7. Geologists continue to use index fossils to write a connected history for the entire Earth by relating rocks on on ________________ to those on another.
9. Subdivisions of a period.
10. The father of paleontology.
11. When we talk about Earth's history, time is measured in ____________________ of years.
12. Refers to animal life.
13. Divide up eras, based partly on evidence of major disturbances in Earth's crust and on the characteristics of the common rock formations.
20. The science of layered rocks, which includes how they relate to time.
22. Smith determined that fossils provided important evidence for the relative ____ of rock layers.
25. Both the Paleozoic era and the Mesozoic era ended in great ________________ of many species of organisms.