The Evidence, Examined Honestly: Homework

Put rock layers in order, tell what a clock in the rock assumes, and sort each find from what it is taken to mean.

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Part A — Key Words / 4

Type the word that fits each clue.

1.
You find the outline of a leaf pressed into mud that hardened long ago. What do we call a trace of life like this?Answer
2.
Mud and sand settle out of water and pack down in layers. What kind of rock forms?Answer
3.
A dolphin's flipper and a person's arm are built on the same plan. What are such body parts called?Answer
4.
A body part is small and seems to have little or no use. What word does the book use for it?Answer

Short answers. Think before you type.

1.
The layers are undisturbed. A coiled snail shell sits below a fern leaf. Which fossil is older?Answer
2.
Relative dating puts fossils in order. What does it not tell you about a fossil?Answer
3.
Uranium turns into lead at a steady rate. Which kind of dating uses that clock?Answer
4.
Radioactive dating assumes the rate of change stayed what, all through the past?Answer
5.
Only a tiny share of living things ever became fossils. Is the fossil record complete or incomplete?Answer

A new cliff, a new sort.

1.
A cliff by a lake has three undisturbed layers. The bottom holds a coiled shell, the middle a fish skeleton and the top a feather's imprint.
a. Which fossil is the oldest?Answer
b. Which fossil is the youngest?Answer
c. For the order rule to work, what must be true of the layers?Answer
2.
Sort it: the bones in a bat's wing match the bones in a person's arm. Was that found and measured, or taken to mean something?Answer
3.
Sort it: the likeness between two animals shows they share an ancestor. Found and measured, or taken to mean?Answer
4.
Common descent reads a likeness as shared ancestry. Who does creation say is behind the same likeness?Answer

Answer each one in one sentence. You mark these yourself against the key.

1.
Pick one of the five kinds of evidence. Say what was found and what it is taken to mean.Answer
2.
Name one thing radioactive dating takes for granted, and say why it matters.Answer

Done? Check your answers.

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Total / 17

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Notes

Part A — the answers.

Part B — the answers.

Part C — the answers.

a. The shell, in the bottom layer. b. The feather imprint, in the top layer. c. They must be undisturbed, not folded or tipped.
Found or measured. Anyone can compare the bones.
Taken to mean. Nobody watched the distant past.
One Designer, using a good plan again and again.

Part D — what a good answer includes.

Answers vary. A good answer names one kind (fossils, dating, body structures, embryos or DNA), says what was found or measured, and then says what it is taken to mean about where living things came from.
Answers vary. A good answer names one assumption (the rate stayed the same, the rock started with none of the product or a known amount, or nothing was added or lost) and says that if it were wrong the age would be off.