Darwin, and After Darwin, Volumes 1 and 3: An Exposition of the Darwinian Theory and a Discussion of Post-Darwinian QuestionsRomanes, George John
Science
Darwin, and After Darwin, Volumes 1 and 3: An Exposition of the Darwinian Theory and a Discussion of Post-Darwinian Questions
Romanes, George John
Evolution (Biology); Heredity
I may give another instance, which, from having passed under my own
eyes, has much struck me. In a memoir on Fossil Sessile Cirripedes,
I stated that, from the number of existing and extinct tertiary
species; from the extraordinary abundance of the individuals of
many species all over the world from the Arctic regions to the
equator, inhabiting various zones of depths from the upper tidal
limits to 50 fathoms; from the perfect manner in which specimens
are preserved in the oldest tertiary beds; from the ease with which
even a fragment of a valve can be recognized; from all these
circumstances, I inferred that had sessile cirripedes existed
during the secondary periods, they would certainly have been
preserved and discovered; and as not one species had then been
discovered in beds of this age, I concluded that this great group
had been suddenly developed at the commencement of the tertiary
series. This was a sore trouble to me, adding as I thought one more
instance of the abrupt appearance of a great group of species. But
my work had hardly been published, when a skilful palæontologist,
M. Bosquet, sent me a drawing of a perfect specimen of an
unmistakeable sessile cirripede, which he had himself extracted
from the chalk of Belgium. And, as if to make the case as striking
as possible, this sessile cirripede was a Chthamalus, a very
common, large, and ubiquitous genus, of which not one specimen has
as yet been found even in any tertiary stratum. Still more
recently, a Pyrgoma, a member of a distinct sub-family of sessile
cirripedes, has been discovered by Mr. Woodward in the upper chalk;
so that we now have abundant evidence of the existence of this
group of animals during the secondary period.
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