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.)