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
"Although the general plan of growth described by Dr. Dawson, and
exhibited in his photographs of vertical sections of the fossil,
is undoubtedly that which is typical of Eozoon, yet I find that
the acervuline mode of growth, also mentioned by Dr. Dawson, very
frequently takes its place in the more superficial parts, where
the chambers, which are arranged in regular tiers in the laminated
portions, are heaped one upon another without any regularity, as is
particularly well shown in some decalcified specimens which I have
myself prepared from the slices last put into my hands. I see no
indication that this departure from the normal type of structure
has resulted from an injury; the transition from the regular to the
irregular mode of increase not being abrupt but gradual. Nor shall I
be disposed to regard it as a monstrosity; since there are many other
Foraminifera in which an originally definite plan of growth gives
place, in a later stage, to a like acervuline piling-up of chambers.
"In regard to the form and relations of the chambers, I have little
to add to Dr. Dawson's description. The evidence afforded by their
internal casts concurs with that of sections, in showing that the
segments of the sarcode-body, by whose aggregation each layer was
constituted, were but very incompletely divided by shelly partitions;
this incomplete separation (as Dr. Dawson has pointed out) having
its parallel in that of the secondary chambers in Carpenteria. But I
have occasionally met with instances in which the separation of the
chambers has been as complete as it is in Foraminifera generally; and
the communication between them is then established by several narrow
passages exactly corresponding with those which I have described and
figured in Cycloclypeus.[S]
[Footnote S: _Op. cit._, p. 294.]
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