Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
Comparing these formed particles with those in the Atlantic soundings, he found the two to be identical; and thus proved that the chalk, like the surroundings, contains these mysterious coccoliths and coccospheres. Here was a further and most interesting confirmation, from internal evidence, of the essential identity of the chalk with modern deep-sea mud.
In working over the soundings collected by Captain Dayman, I was surprised to find that many of what I have called the "granules" of that mud were not, as one might have been tempted to think at first, the more powder and waste of Globigerinoe, but that they had a definite form and size. I termed these bodies "coccoliths," and doubted their organic nature. Dr.
Wallich verified my observation, and added the interesting discovery that, not unfrequently, bodies similar to these "coccoliths" were aggregated together into spheroids, which he termed "coccospheres." So far as we knew, these bodies, the nature of which is extremely puzzling and problematical, were peculiar to the Atlantic soundings. But, a few years ago, Mr.
Globigerinoe, coccoliths, and coccospheres are found as the chief constituents of both, and testify to the general similarity of the conditions under which both have been formed.
Here then were organisms, as old as the cretaceous epoch, still alive, and doing their work of rock-making at the bottom of existing seas. What if Globigerina and the Coccoliths should not be the only survivors of a world passed away, which are hidden beneath three miles of salt water? The letter which Dr. Wyville Thomson wrote to Dr.
Comparing these formed particles with those in the Atlantic soundings, he found the two to be identical; and thus proved that the chalk, like the soundings, contains these mysterious coccoliths and coccospheres. Here was a further and a most interesting confirmation, from internal evidence, of the essential identity of the chalk with modern deep-sea mud.
These were connected by a mass of living gelatinous matter to which he has given the name of Bathybius, and which contains abundance of very minute bodies termed Coccoliths and Coccospheres, which have also been detected fossil in chalk. Sir Leopold MacClintock and Dr. Wallich have ascertained that 95 per cent of the mud of a large part of the North Atlantic consists of Globigerina shells.
Scattered through it were calcareous coccoliths. Such were the facts; what inference was to be drawn? The only thing this substance resembled was one of the many simple forms of oceanic life recently found and described by the great zoologist Haeckel.
In working over the soundings collected by Captain Dayman, I was surprised to find that many of what I have called the "granules" of that mud, were not, as one might have been tempted to think at first, the mere powder and waste of Globigerinae, but that they had a definite form and size. I termed these bodies "coccoliths," and doubted their organic nature. Dr.
Etheridge, however, has ascertained by microscopical examination that it is made up of Coccoliths, Discoliths, and other minute fossils like those of the Chalk classed by Huxley as Bathybius, when this term is used in its widest sense.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking