Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
One represents the line of man's evolution, the other that of the foraminifera. Between these two lines you may insert as many other lines as necessary.
Examine a piece of the shale from one of the oil districts of California, and you will discover that it is a very peculiar rock, for it is made up almost wholly of minute organisms which once inhabited the ocean. Among the forms which you will find are the silicious skeletons of diatoms, the calcareous skeletons of foraminifera, scales of fish, and, rarely, the whole skeleton of a fish.
The Globigerina of the present day, for example, is not different specifically from that of the chalk; and the same may be said of many other Foraminifera. The longest line of human ancestry must hide its diminished head before the pedigree of this insignificant shell-fish. We Englishmen are proud to have an ancestor who was present at the Battle of Hastings.
Yet this impetus is evident, and a mere glance at fossil species shows us that life need not have evolved at all, or might have evolved only in very restricted limits, if it had chosen the alternative, much more convenient to itself, of becoming anchylosed in its primitive forms. Certain Foraminifera have not varied since the Silurian epoch.
But the fact is that the proportion of other Foraminifera is exceedingly small, nor have I found as yet, in the deep-sea deposits, any such matters as fragments of molluscous shells, of Echini, &c., which abound in shallow waters, and are quite as likely to be drifted as the heavy Globigerinoe.
The 'Globigerina' of the Atlantic soundings is identical with that which occurs in the chalk; and the casts of lower silurian 'Foraminifera', which Ehrenberg has recently described, seem to indicate the existence at that remote period of forms singularly like those which now exist.
Whatever may be the mode of life of the Foraminifera, to which the calcareous element of the deep-sea "chalk" owes its existence, the fact that it is the chief and most widely spread material of the sea-bottom in the intermediate zone, throughout both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Indian Ocean, at depths from a few hundred to over two thousand fathoms, is established.
The long snake was covered with seashell rubble and bristling with foraminifera; a crust of caked gravel protected it from any mollusks that might bore into it. It rested serenely, sheltered from the sea's motions, under a pressure favorable to the transmission of that electric spark that goes from America to Europe in 32/100 of a second.
What's the name?" "You may call me Foraminifera 9," I directed, since I wished to be incognito, as you put it, and we proceeded along the "street." All five of the young men indicated a desire to serve me, offering indeed to take my carry-all. I rejected this, politely. I looked about me with lively interest, as you may well believe. Kwel dirt, kwel dinginess, kwel cold!
If some of these pebbles consist of that peculiar flint, of which layers more or less continuous are characteristic of the chalk, and which include fossil shells, sponges, and foraminifera of cretaceous species, we may confidently infer that the chalk was the oldest of the two formations.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking