Lesson 1 Analyzing the Rock and Fossil Records – We learned about the principle of uniformitarianism which states that geologic processes that occur today are similar to those from the past. Then we learned about relative-age dating which determines the age of rocks and geological features compared with other rocks and features nearby. Next, we answered several questions about several different types of rocks by applying the principles of relative-age dating. We named the principles of relative-age dating and then applied them to determine and label the oldest to newest layers of rock in several illustrations.