Abiotic: Non-living factors such as wind, rain, temperature, and erosion.
Biodiversity: The variety of living things.
Biotic Factors: Living factors of an ecosystem such as decomposers, predators and scavengers.
Climate: The average type of weather (temperature, wind velocity, precipitation, etc.) at a given location.
Dispersal: The spread of seeds or organisms from one place to another.
Ecosystem: The interacting community of organisms and their environment in a given region.
Index fossils: Fossils of organisms that existed over a large geographic area for a relatively short period of time. They can be used to identify the age of rocks they are preserved in.
Marine: Of the ocean or living in the ocean.
Mass extinction: The extinction of large numbers of species at the same time as a result of a widespread catastrophic event.
Paleoecology: The study of ancient organisms and how they interacted with their environments and with one another.
Terrestrial: Of the land or living on land.
Uplift: The process that causes part of the Earth’s crust to rise above surrounding areas. This can cause layers of rock to become exposed at the surface, as in mountain-building.)