Popular Science Monthly - Oct, Nov, Dec, 1915 — Volume 86 by Anonymous
page 197 of 485 (40%)
page 197 of 485 (40%)
|
beneath the sea level glaciers and deserts and desert deposits
alike must also disappear. Vegetation will clothe the earth, and marine life swarm in the shallow seas of the broadening continental shelf. Under the mantle of vegetation, mechanical erosion will be less, that is, the breaking up of rocks into small pieces without any very great change, but the rich soil will be charged with carbon dioxide, and chemical activity will still go on. Rivers will still contain carbonates, even though they carry very little mud, and in the oceans the corals and similar living forms will deposit the burden of lime brought into the sea by the rivers. Thus, if forces of degradation have their own way, in time there will be a gradual change in dominant character, from coarse sediments to fine, from rocks which are simply crumbled debris to rocks that are the product of chemical decay and sorting, so that we have the lime deposited as limestone in one place and the alumina and silica, in another. We shall have a change from local deposits, marine on the edges of large continents, or land deposits, very often coarse, with fossils few and far between, to rocks in which marine deposits will spread far over the present land in which will appear more traces of that life that crowded in the shallow warm seas which form on the flooded continents. We shall have a transition from deposits which may be largely formed on the surface of the continents. lakes, rivers, salt beds and gypsum beds, due to the drying up of such lakes and the wind-blown deposits of the steppes, to deposits which are almost wholly marine. Now, I need not say (to those who are familiar with geology) that we have indications of just such alternations in times |
|