The Prehistoric World; or, Vanished races by Emory Adams Allen
page 45 of 805 (05%)
page 45 of 805 (05%)
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locality but all over the earth, geologists have gradually
unfolded the history of life on the globe. It is admitted that, at best, our knowledge in that direction is fragmentary. This arises from errors in observation as well as that fossil formations are rare, or at least localities where they are known to exist are but few. So our knowledge of the past is as if we were examining some record from which pages, chapters, and even volumes, have been extracted. Illustration of Paleozoic Forest--------------- In consequence of this imperfect record we can not, as yet, trace a gradual successive growth from the low forms of animal and plant, life, that characterized the closing period of Archean time, to the highly organized types of the present. The record suddenly ceases and when we again pick up the thread we are surrounded by more advanced types, higher forms of life. Though we may hope that future discoveries will do much toward completing the records, we can not hope that they will ever really be perfected. So, from our present stand-point, the history of life on the globe falls naturally into three great divisions.<6> This is no more than we might expect, when we reflect that nature's laws are universal in their action, and that the world, as a whole, has been subjected to the same set of changes. The period following on after Archean time is called, by geologists, Paleozoic time. |
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