Some Salient Points in the Science of the EarthDawson, John William, Sir
Science
Some Salient Points in the Science of the Earth
Dawson, John William, Sir
Geology; Paleontology
Growing, as Eozoon did, on the floor of the ocean, and covering wide
patches with more or less irregular masses, it must have thrown up from
its whole surface its pseudopods to seize whatever floating particles
of food the waters carried over it. There is also reason to believe,
from the outline of certain specimens, that it often grew upward
in conical or club-shaped forms, and that the broader patches were
penetrated by large pits or oscula, admitting the sea-water deeply into
the substance of the masses. In this way its growth might be rapid and
continuous; but it does not seem to have possessed the power of growing
indefinitely by new and living layers covering those that had died,
in the manner of some corals. Its life seems to have had a definite
termination, and when that was reached, an entirely new colony had to
be commenced. In this it had more affinity with the Foraminifera, as
we now know them, than with the corals, though practically it had the
same power with the coral polyps of accumulating limestone in the sea
bottom--a power indeed still possessed by its foraminiferal successors.
In the case of coral limestones we know that a large proportion of
these consist not of continuous reefs, but of fragments of coral mixed
with other calcareous organisms, spread usually by waves and currents
in continuous beds over the sea bottom. In like manner we find in the
limestones containing Eozoon, layers of fragmental matter which show
in places the characteristic structures, and which evidently represent
the _débris_ swept from the Eozoic masses and reefs by the action of
the waves. It is with this fragmental matter that the small rounded
organisms already referred to most frequently occur; and while they
may be distinct animals, they may also be the fry of Eozoon, or small
portions of its acervuline upper surface floated off in a living state,
and possibly capable of living independently and of founding new
colonies.
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