Geoscience

1. You are in charge of training the first astronauts to go to Mars to look for fossils. Explain to them where (sedimentary environments, regions) they should look for fossils – and why they should look there. Explain what features they should use to distinguish Martian fossils from inorganic objects – and why. Explain how they could use Martian fossils to correlate from one exposure to another. And explain how they could use the fossils to reconstruct the evolutionary history of Martian life. 2. Paleontologists reconstruct the biology of extinct organisms and characteristics of ancient environments using a variety of approaches. For example, we talked about basic approaches, or lines of evidence used to interpret the paleobiology of dinosaurs (and other fossils), and basic approaches or lines of evidence used in paleoecology. Use examples in answering these questions. Examples alone are not a good answer. a. What sort of information does each line of evidence produce? Qualitative or quantitative? b. Are some sources of information better than others? Why do you think so? c. How can these different lines of evidence be used together?      

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