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Updated: May 2, 2025
The notion that animals can live and flourish in the sea, at the vast depths from which apparently living Globigerinae have been brought up, does not agree very well with our usual conceptions respecting the conditions of animal life; and it is not so absolutely impossible as it might at first appear to be, that the Globigerinae of the Atlantic sea-bottom do not live and die where they are found.
The history of the discovery of these living Globigerinae, and of the part which they play in rock building, is singular enough. It is a discovery which, like others of no less scientific importance, has arisen, incidentally, out of work devoted to very different and exceedingly practical interests.
The evidence furnished by the hewing, facing, and superposition of the stones of the Pyramids, that these structures were built by men, has no greater weight than the evidence that the chalk was built by Globigerinae; and the belief that those ancient pyramid-builders were terrestrial and air-breathing creatures like ourselves, is it not better based than the conviction that the chalk-makers lived in the sea?
It may be worth while briefly to consider a few of these collateral proofs that the chalk was deposited at the bottom of the sea. The great mass of the chalk is composed, as we have seen, of the skeletons of Globigerinae, and other simple organisms, imbedded in granular matter.
However, the important points for us are, that the living Globigerinae are exclusively marine animals, the skeletons of which abound at the bottom of deep seas; and that there is not a shadow of reason for believing that the habits of the Globigerinae of the chalk differed from those of the existing species.
But if the Radiolaria and Diatoms are thus rained upon the bottom of the sea, from the superficial layer of its waters in which they pass their lives, it is obviously possible that the Globigerinae may be similarly derived; and if they were so, it would be much more easy to understand how they obtain their supply of food than it is at present.
During the cruise of the "Bulldog," already alluded to, it was ascertained that while the calcareous Globigerinae had almost exclusive possession of certain tracts of the sea-bottom, they were wholly wanting in others, as between Greenland and Labrador. According to Dr.
As I have mentioned, the soundings from the great Atlantic plain are almost entirely made up of Globigerinae, with the granules which have been mentioned and some few other calcareous shells; but a small percentage of the chalky mud perhaps at most some five per cent of it is of a different nature, and consists of shells and skeletons composed of silex, or pure flint.
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.
Those Globigerinae can be traced down to the Globigerinae which live at the surface of the present great oceans, and the remains of which, falling to the bottom of the sea, give rise to a chalky mud.
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