| → kinds of birds, 1860 1861 1866 1869 |
| different bird-like animals, 1872 |
|
| → beds. 1861 1866 1869 1872 |
| beds. Notwithstanding that the number of joints shown in the fossil impressions correspond with the number in the several toes of living birds feet, some authors doubt whether the animals which left the impressions were really birds. 1860 |
|
| ↑ 2 blocks not present in 1859 1860 1861 1866 1869; present in 1872 |
| Not long ago, palæontologists maintained that the whole class of birds came suddenly into existence during the eocene period; but now we know, on the authority of Professor Owen, that a bird certainly lived during the deposition of the upper greensand; and still more recently, that strange bird, the Archeopteryx, with a long lizard-like tail, bearing a pair of feathers on each joint, and with its wings furnished with two free claws, has been discovered in the oolitic slates of Solenhofen.
Hardly any recent discovery shows more forcibly than this, how little we as yet know of the former inhabitants of the world.
|
|
| → the eocene 1866 1869 |
| an early tertiary 1860 1861 |
|
| → OMIT 1861 1866 1869 |
| (as may be seen in Lyells Manual), 1860 |
|
| ↑ 2 blocks not present in 1860 1861 1866 1869 1872; present in 1859 |
| The most striking case, however, is that of the Whale family; as these animals have huge bones, are marine, and range over the world, the fact of not a single bone of a whale having been discovered in any secondary formation, seemed fully to justify the belief that this great and distinct order had been suddenly produced in the interval between the latest secondary and earliest tertiary formation.
But now we may read in the Supplement to Lyell's 'Manual,' published in 1858, clear evidence of the existence of whales in the upper greensand, some time before the close of the secondary period.
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|
|
Had it not been for the rare accident of the preservation of footsteps in the new red sandstone of the United States, who would have ventured to suppose
no less than at least thirty
→kinds of birds,
some of gigantic size, existed during that period? Notwithstanding that the number of joints shown in the fossil impressions
with the number in the several toes of living birds' feet, some authors doubt whether the animals which left
impressions were really birds. Not a fragment of bone has been discovered in these
→beds.
↑ Until quite recently these authors might have maintained, and some have maintained, that the whole class of birds came suddenly into existence during
→the eocene
period; but now we know, on the authority of Professor
→OMIT
that a bird certainly lived during the deposition of the upper
and still more recently, that strange bird, the Archeopteryx, with a long lizard-like tail, bearing a pair of feathers on each joint, and with its wings furnished with two free claws, has been discovered in the oolitic slates of Solenhofen. Hardly any recent discovery shows more forcibly than
how little we as yet know of the former inhabitants of the world. ↑
|
|
| I may give another instance,
from having passed under my own
has much struck me. In a memoir on Fossil Sessile Cirripedes, I
stated that, from the
of existing and extinct tertiary species; from the extraordinary abundance of the individuals of many species all over the world, from the Arctic regions to the equator, inhabiting various zones of depths from the upper tidal limits to 50 fathoms; from the perfect manner in which specimens are
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