The Ancient Life-History of the Earth; A Comprehensive Outline of the Principles and Leading Facts of Pal Ontological Science

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 Excerpt: ...in their colour, but also in their conspicuous paucity of organic remains. They for the most part are either wholly unfossiliferous, or they contain the remains of plants or the bones of reptiles, such as may easily have been drifted from some neighbouring shore. The few fossils which may be considered as properly belonging to these deposits are chiefly Crustaceans (Estheria) or Fishes, which may well have lived in the waters of estuaries or vast inland seas. We may therefore conclude, with considerable probability, that the barren sandy and marly accumulations of the Bunter Sandstein and Lower Keuper were not laid down in an open sea, but are probably brackish-water deposits, formed in estuaries or land locked bodies of salt water. This at any rate would appear to be the case as regards these members of the series as developed in Britain and in their typical areas on the continent of Europe; and the origin of most of the North American Trias would appear to be much the same. Whether this view be correct or not, it is certain that the beds in question were laid down in shallow water, and in the immediate vicinity of land, as shown by the numerous drifted plants which they contain and the common occurrence in them of the footprints of air-breathing animals (Birds, Reptiles, and Amphibians). On the other hand, the middle and highest members of the Trias are largely calcareous, and are replete with the remains of undoubted marine animals. There cannot, therefore, be the smallest doubt but that the Muschelkalk and the Rhaetic or Kossen beds were slowly accumulated in an open sea, of at least a moderate depth; and they have preserved for us a very considerable selection from the marine fauna of the Triassic period. The plants of the Trias are, on the whole, as d...