| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Fossils | the preserved and usually lithified remains of organisms found in geologic deposits |
| Geologic time scale | an internationally accepted system that serves as the standard means of subdividing the many millions of years of earth's history |
| Glaciation | a period of regional or global development and expansion of glaciers |
| Law of superposition | an assumption made in geology that overlying material is younger than the underlying material |
| Law of uniformitarianism | an assumption made in geology that the natural processes of rock formation, weathering, erosion, and deposition that occur today also occurred in the past and can be applied to other historical studies in natural history. The laws is often states as "The present is the key to the past." |
| Milankovitch orbital theory of glaciation | the widely accepted theory that natural changes in the orbital geometry of the earth produced the cycles of glaciation and non-glaciation that typify the late Quaternary |
| Orogeny | the formation of mountains by geologic processes |
| Plate tectonics | the modern theory of how continental drift occurs due to movement of the mantle and outflows of magma that cause movement of the overlying crust |
| Theory of continental drift | theory that the geologic plates on which the continents lie have shifted their relative geographic positions very significantly over geologic time |
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