The Museum of Science and Art Volume 12 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 Excerpt: ...at different depths in the lias at a distance from any entire skeletons of those marine lizards, from which they were derived, as if the muddy bottom of the sea received small sudden accessions of matter from time to time, covering up the ooprolites and other exuviae, which had accumulated during the intervals. It is further stated, that at Lyme Regis, those surfaces only of the ooprolites, which lay uppermost at the bottom of the sea, have suffered partial decay from the aotion of the water, before they were covered and protected by the muddy sediment that had afterwards permanently enveloped them.f 378. The remains of cephalopods give like indications of sudden death. Numerous specimens of the Calamary, or penand-ink fish (Geotenthis Bollensis), have also been met with in these strata at Lyme, with the ink-bags still distended, containing the ink in a dried state, chiefly composed of carbon and but slightly impregnated with carbonate of lime. These, like the Saurians, must therefore have been promptly buried, for if long exposed after death, the membrane containing the ink would have been decayed.: f 379. The identity of the specific forms of the fauna of this period, in all latitudes, from 40 to the Frozen Ocean, shows that Bridg. Treat, p. 125. t Lyell's Manual, p. 327; De la Beche, Geol. Res., p. 334; Buckland, Bridg. Treat., p. 307. $ Buckland, Bridg. Treat., p. 307. no difference of climates such as the present then existed, had the intertropical character. All EIGHTH JURASSIC PERIOD. 380. The strata deposited during this period, called by D'Orbigny the Coralline stage, correspond to coral rag of British, and German geologists. 381. Exclusive of annulata, the following table represents the fauna of this period. Synopsis of the Animal Kingdom, (exclusi...