Bare Earth Elements: A geo-themed pop quiz in honor of 12/12/12
© Paul Harrison, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
© Zimbres, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
**UPDATE** Answers listed below. Scroll down carefully if you'd still like to test yourself.
Congratulations to Robert Ellis for winning an EARTH Magazine T-shirt!
Think you have your geo-vocabulary down, or want to test your geo-jargon chops? Be our guest!
Rearrange the twelve 12-letter words below using their 12-word definitions as clues. Some are a little easier, some are a little harder. All are geo-fantabulous!
Email your name and answers to firstname.lastname@example.org with the subject "EARTH Quiz" by 11:59 p.m. EST on Dec. 14, 2012, for a chance to win an EARTH Magazine T-shirt. (We'll draw a winner at random from the respondents with the most correct answers.) And let us know on Twitter or Facebook if you can think of any other good 12-letter geo-words. Check back here for the answers in a few days.
Containing lots of diatoms, single-celled algae that secrete intricate shells of silica.
A siliciclastic sedimentary rock containing pebbles larger than 2 millimeters in diameter.
The ozone-rich layer between about 10 and 50 kilometers above Earth’s surface.
A squat, heavily armored Late Cretaceous dinosaur that lived in North America.
Being built or increasing in size by the accumulation of external material.
A laminated, dome-shaped biogenic structure formed by cyanobacteria in shallow tidal zones.
The geologic age that lasted from 156 million to 151 million years ago.
Metamorphism that alters a rock’s chemical composition, often due to fluid infiltration.
A surface between rock layers that were not deposited in chronological succession.
Paleozoic supercontinent that included Africa, Antarctica, Australia, South America, India and Arabia
Rock composed of minerals — like chrysotile — formed by hydration of ferromagnesian precursors.
Having to do with fluid flow caused by temperature or salinity gradients.
1. Diatomaceous; 2. Conglomerate; 3. Stratosphere; 4. Ankylosaurus; 5. Accretionary; 6. Stromatolite; 7. Kimmeridgian; 8. Metasomatism; 9. Unconformity; 10. Gondwanaland; 11. Serpentinite; 12. Thermohaline