Fossil

“ The fossil remains of animals and plants wonderfully furnish the guidance which he needs. The corals and shells, the ferns and conifera, the teeth and bones found in the various strata of the earth-rind are the landmarks which point out to him his way through the labyrinth of the primitive ages of our globe, as the compass directs the mariner over the pathless sea. Every leading fossil has its fixed chronological character, and thus the age of the formation 6in which it occurs may be ascertained, and its place determined in the geological scale. ”

“ The study of fossils does not assert any limit as to the grade of an organism. A fossil may be some large and curious fish, a rare bird, a beautiful stone lily, or merely a lump of resin which long ago dropped from some tree of the coal period.
So also, we have fossil leaves, fruits, roots, fossil rain-marks, fossil footprints, fossil worm-casts and burrows, and little fossil cases of caddis-worms. Some very valuable fossils are called coprolites ”

“ This aspect of the science is best seen in the historical and stratigraphical parts of geology, in which fossils are the chief data for study. The interpretation of a fossil into a species of organism, having its definite place in the elaborate classification of the zoölogist, or as an indicator of the time and place and mode of formation of the strata in which it is buried, is, to be sure, a most intricate and, at first thought it would seem, an unattractive process. ”

“ It is this symbolic character of the classical languages and of the mathematics which fits them to be universal means of liberal training. The symbolic nature of the fossil fits it to become the exponent of training in the pure science of nature. « 43 » The fossil is a mark which stands for something, and thus, in the nature of things, it asks for interpretation. As a symbol it stimulates minute and accurate observation, and kindles close and exhaustive thought; as a symbol it leaves us the ideas it has engendered after it is lost to memory as an observation. ”

“ Fossils differ greatly in kind. Sometimes the entire shell or bone is changed into stone, losing all its animal substance, but retaining its old outline and its natural markings. Sometimes the fossil is merely the hardened impress of the outside of a shell or leaf, which has dented its picture on soft clay, and has itself disappeared, while the soft clay has become rock, [pg 17] and the indented picture remains fixed through after-centuries. Sometimes the fossil is the cast of the inside of a shell ”

“ It should be understood first that a fossil is some record, commonly preserved in rock, of a kind of plant or animal which no longer exists 6 as a living type. This, at least, is the ordinary sense of the word and more elaborate definitions are of small service to anyone. It may be necessary to add, however, that all things which have lived at any time are regarded as either plants or animals. ”

“ But no place has proved so favorable for fossil remains as the bed of the sea. The rapid deposit of sediment on the ocean floor and the remoteness from changes of heat and cold, have made the old ocean beds, such as we visited in our mountain of fossils, a wonderful storehouse of the life-forms of distant ages. The mollusks, corals, and crinoids furnish us the most varied and beautiful fossil remains, and in some cases the preservation is so perfect, that traces are retained of even the former colorings of the shells of mollusks and the scales of fishes that lived in the remotest times. ”

“ The most prominent characteristic of this period was, a long and bitter contest as to the nature of fossil remains. Were they mere "sports of Nature," or had they once been endowed with life? Simple as this problem now seems, centuries passed before the wise men of that time were agreed upon its solution.
Sea-shells in the solid rock on the tops of mountains early attracted the attention of the ancients, and the learned men among them seem to have appreciated in some instances their true character, and given rational explanations of their presence. ”

“ FOSSILISATION.—The term "fossilisation" is applied to all those processes through which the remains of organised beings may pass in being converted into fossils. These processes are numerous and varied; but there are three principal modes of fossilisation which alone need be considered here. In the first instance, the fossil is to all intents and purposes an actual portion of the original organised being—such as a bone, a shell, or a piece of wood. ”

“ In looking over the records of paleontology, its history may conveniently be divided into four periods, well marked by prominent features, but, like all stages of intellectual growth, without definite boundaries.
The first period, dating back to the time when men first noticed fossil remains in the rocks, and queried as to their nature, is of special historic interest. ”

“ It would be a great error to suppose that these organic remains were fragmentary relics. Our museums exhibit fossil shells of immeasurable antiquity, as perfect as the day they were formed, whole skeletons without a limb disturbed—nay, the changed flesh, the developing embryos, and even the very footsteps of primeval organisms. Thus the naturalist finds in the bowels of the earth species as well defined as, and in some groups of animals more numerous than, those that breathe the upper air. ”

“ Thus, the same fossil, occurring in successive groups of strata, and with the merely trivial and varietal differences due to the gradual change in its environment, has been repeatedly described as a distinct species, with a distinct name, in every bed in which it was found. We know, however, that many fossils range vertically through many groups of strata, and there are some which even pass through several formations. The mere fact of a difference of physical position ought never to be taken into account at all in considering and determining the true affinities of a fossil. ”

“ I strongly imagine that if it were not for the peculiar appearance that fossilised animals have, any of you might readily walk through a museum which contains fossil remains mixed up with those of the present forms of life, and I doubt very much whether your uninstructed eyes would lead you to see any vast or wonderful difference between the two. ”

“ Fossils, as these are called, consist generally of the harder and more durable parts of animals and plants, such as bones, shells, teeth, seeds, bark, and ligneous tissues, &c. But it is usual to extend the term fossil to even the casts or impressions of such remains, and to foot-marks and tracks, whether of vertebrates, molluscs, crustaceans, or annelids. The organic remains met with in the rocks have usually undergone some chemical change. They have become petrified wholly or in part. ”

“ When I assert that human bones have never been found among fossil organic remains, (I must [115] be understood to speak of fossils or petrifactions, properly so called) , or, in other words, in the regular strata of the surface of the globe; for in peat-bogs (tourbières) , and alluvial deposits, as in burying-grounds, human bones might as well be found as bones of horses, or other common species. ”

“ For this reason some of the earlier books dealing with fossils include discussions of rocks, minerals, and other inorganic objects.
There is much evidence to indicate that man has been interested in fossils since the very earliest times, and fossil shells, bones, and teeth have been found associated with the remains of primitive and prehistoric men. ”

“ If such persons will refer to works which treat of petrifaction in all their various kinds of transformation and in all the thousand genera and species of fossil organisms, they will find that although bones, shells, and the hard parts of animals, changed to stone, yet preserving their original outlines, are of constant occurrence, yet there is not a single instance on record of fossil flesh ”

“ The anatomical, morphological, and, so far as we can judge, the physiological and biological relationship of the fossil with living organisms, is so great and comprehensive that in the present state of science a systematic botany or zoölogy, that should only treat of the fossils or of living organisms alone, would be imperfect. ”

“ And the widely spread notion, that the fossil types are altogether different from the existing families of plants and animals, is one of the unscientific exaggerations of actual facts. All the fossil plants and animals can be arranged in the orders and classes of the existing flora and fauna. ”

“ His studies led him to infer that the fossils contained in the oldest rocks are very different from any of the species of the present time; that the newer the formation, the more do the remains approach in form to the organic beings of the present creation, and that in the very latest formations, fossil remains of species now existing occur. ”

“ In like manner our knowledge of other animal groups has been often essentially modified by the accidental discovery of a single fossil. The palæontological records must necessarily be exceedingly imperfect, because we know of so very few examples, or only mere fragments of very many important fossils. ”

“ And when it does emerge from below all the accumulations of subsequent ages, there will be found only the fossil remains of vegetable and early primitive animal life. Some of these older water-deposited rocks are commingled with subsequent layers, and sometimes they yield fossil remains of some of the earlier forms of vegetable life, while on the topmost layers occasionally may be found some of the more primitive forms of the early marine-animal organisms. ”

“ In other cases, though practically the real body it represents, all the cavities of the fossil, down to its minutest recesses, may have become infiltrated with mineral matter. It need hardly be added, that it is in the more modern rocks that we find the fossils, as a rule, least changed from their former condition; but the original structure is often more or less completely retained in some of the fossils from even the most ancient formations. ”

“ This has been to a great extent dredged from the rivers; and thus remains of Pleistocene and of Tertiary animals have been mixed indiscriminately together. It is often impossible to determine to what formation a fossil may belong. To add to the difficulty of the palæontologist, the vertebrate remains are sometimes found washed out and mingled with bones or teeth of what appear to have been domestic animals. ”

“ The theory of the origin of new species by variation will also explain why a species which has once died out never reappears, and why the fossil fauna and flora recede farther and farther from the living type in proportion as we trace it back to remoter ages. It would also account for the fact, that when we have to intercalate a new set of fossiliferous strata between two groups previously known, the newly discovered fossils serve to fill up gaps between specific or generic types previously familiar to us, supplying often the missing links of the chain, which, if transmutation is accepted, must once have been continuous. ”

“ Let this be as it may, I wish one of you children might become a novelist, but you never will, you will be farmers just like all us New England mountaineers.
"Learned men have discovered, by digging in the rocky surface of the earth, that under certain conditions, oysters or other animals, will turn to stone. They call [71] them fossils. Scientists have also learned that each kind, wherever found, represents the age in which the animal lived. So, the fossil, you see, is an animal which died and turned to stone, perhaps millions of years ago. ”

“ These views we have of the past aspects of the animal kingdom are always much more incomplete than our knowledge of the existing aspect; partly because many animals, from the softness of their bodies, have left either no fossil remains at all, or only very [36] imperfect casts of the external surfaces of their bodies; and partly because the turning of any animal into a fossil, and its subsequent discovery by a geologist, are occasional accidents ”

“ He discovered that the fossils in rocks, instead of being scattered haphazard, are arranged in regular systems, so that any given stratum of rock is labelled by its fossil population; that the order of succession of such groups of fossils is always the same in any vertical series of strata in which they occur, and The new geology that a fossil, having once disappeared, never reappears in a later stratum. ”

“ By the other method, fossil animals are regarded principally as so many landmarks in the ancient records of the world, and are studied historically and as regards their relations to the chronological succession of the strata in which they are entombed. ”

“ The older the rock, the simpler the plant and animal life it contains. Thus fossils can give a clue to the age of the rock strata.
Fossils can teach history. They tell us about plants and animals that are now extinct—the dinosaur, for example. They can also tell of ancient climates. Coral found in rocks in Greenland suggests it must have once been warm. Remains of fir and spruce trees have been found in the tropics.
How are fossils formed? Teeth, bone and wood don't last long in their original state. However, buried materials decompose, leaving a film of carbon as a fossil. ”

“ Nor need we enter on the vast field of discussion as to modern animals and plants opened up by Darwin and others. I shall confine myself altogether to that historical or palæontological aspect in which life presents itself when we study the fossil remains entombed in the sediments of the earth's crust, and which will enable me at least to show why some students of fossils hesitate to give in their adhesion to any of the current notions as to the origin of species. ”