Life's Dawn on Earth: Being the history of the oldest known fossil remains, and their relations to geological time and to the development of the animal kingdomDawson, John William, Sir
History
Life's Dawn on Earth: Being the history of the oldest known fossil remains, and their relations to geological time and to the development of the animal kingdom
Dawson, John William, Sir
Life -- Origin; Paleontology -- Precambrian
Let us, then, examine the structure of Eozoon, taking a typical
specimen, as we find it in the limestone of Grenville or Petite Nation.
In such specimens the skeleton of the animal is represented by a white
crystalline marble, the cavities of the cells by green serpentine, the
mode of whose introduction we shall have to consider in the sequel.
The lowest layer of serpentine represents the first gelatinous coat
of animal matter which grew upon the bottom, and which, if we could
have seen it before any shell was formed upon its surface, must have
resembled, in appearance at least, the shapeless coat of living slime
found in some portions of the bed of the deep sea, which has received
from Huxley the name _Bathybius_, and which is believed to be a
protozoon of indefinite extension, though it may possibly be merely the
pulpy sarcode of sponges and similar things penetrating the ooze at
their bases. On this primary layer grew a delicate calcareous shell,
perforated by innumerable minute tubuli, and by some larger pores or
septal orifices, while supported at intervals by perpendicular plates
or pillars. Upon this again was built up, in order to strengthen it,
a thickening or supplemental skeleton, more dense, and destitute of
fine tubuli, but traversed by branching canals, through which the
soft gelatinous matter could pass for the nourishment of the skeleton
itself, and the extension of pseudopods beyond it. (Fig. 10.) So was
formed the first layer of Eozoon, which seems in some cases to have
spread by lateral extension over several inches of sea bottom. On this
the process of growth of successive layers of animal sarcode and of
calcareous skeleton was repeated again and again, till in some cases
even a hundred or more layers were formed. (Photograph, Plate III.,
and nature print, Plate V.) As the process went on, however, the
vitality of the organism became exhausted, probably by the deficient
nourishment of the central and lower layers making greater and greater
demands on those above, and so the succeeding layers became thinner,
and less supplemental skeleton was developed. Finally, toward the
top, the regular arrangement in layers was abandoned, and the cells
became a mass of rounded chambers, irregularly piled up in what Dr.
Carpenter has termed an "acervuline" manner, and with very thin walls
unprotected by supplemental skeleton. Then the growth was arrested,
and possibly these upper layers gave off reproductive germs, fitted
to float or swim away and to establish new colonies. We may have
such reproductive germs in certain curious globular bodies, like
loose cells, found in connection with irregular Eozoon in one of
the Laurentian limestones at Long Lake and elsewhere. These curious
organisms I observed some years ago, but no description of them was
published at the time, as I hoped to obtain better examples. I now
figure some of them, and give their description in a note. (Fig. 18).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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