A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
History
A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
American journal of science; Science -- United States -- History
In 1888 Walcott presented his conclusions in regard to the sequence of
the strata in the typical Taconic area and to the north and south of it.
He collected Lower Cambrian fossils at more than one hundred localities
“within the typical Taconic area,” and said that the thickness of his
“terrane No. 5” or “Cambrian (Georgia),” now referable to the Lower
Cambrian, is “14,000 feet or more.” He demonstrated that the Lower
Cambrian is infolded with the Lower and Middle Ordovician, and confirmed
Emmons’s statement that the former rests upon his Primary or
Pre-Cambrian masses. Elsewhere, he writes: “To the west of the Taconic
range the section passes down through the limestone (3) [of Lower and
Middle Ordovician age] to the hydromica schists (2) [whose age may also
be of early Ordovician], and thence to the great development of slates
and shales with their interbedded sparry limestones, calciferous and
arenaceous strata, all of which contain more or less of the
Olenellus ... fauna.” He then knew thirty-five species in Washington
County, New York (=35=, 401, 1888).
Finally in 1915 Walcott said that in the Cordilleran area of America
there was a movement that brought about changes “in the sedimentation
and succession of the faunas which serve to draw a boundary line between
the Lower and Middle Cambrian series.... The length of this period of
interruption must have been considerable ... and when connection with
the Pacific was resumed a new fauna that had been developing in the
Pacific was then introduced into the Cordilleran sea and constituted the
Middle Cambrian fauna. The change in the species from the Lower to the
Middle Cambrian fauna is very great.” He then goes on to show that in
the Appalachian geosyncline there was another movement that shut out the
Middle Cambrian _Paradoxides_ fauna of the Atlantic realm from this
trough, and all deposition as well.
_Conclusions._—Accordingly it appears that everywhere in America the
Lower Cambrian formations are separated by a land interval of long
duration from those of Middle Cambrian time. These formations therefore
unite into a natural system of rocks or a period of time. Between Middle
and Upper Cambrian time, however, there appears to be a complete
transition in the Cordilleran trough, binding these two series of
deposits into one natural or diastrophic system. Hence the writer
proposes that the Lower Cambrian of America be known as the Taconic
system. The Middle and Upper Cambrian series can be continued for the
present under the term Cambrian system, a term, however, that is by no
means in good standing for these formations, as will be demonstrated
under the discussion of the Silurian controversy.
_The Silurian Controversy._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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