The Ancient Life History of the Earth / A Comprehensive Outline of the Principles and Leading Facts of Palæontological Science

by Henry Alleyne Nicholson

Fig 12.—Section of Coniston Limestone (Lower Silurian) from Keisler, Westmoreland; magnified. The matrix is very coarsely crystalline, and the included organic remains are chiefly stems of Crinoids. (Original.) annihilated, and the rock becomes completely crystalline throughout. This, for example, is the case with the ordinary white "statuary marble," slices of which exhibit under the microscope nothing but an aggregate of beautifully transparent crystals of carbonate of lime, without the smallest traces of fossils. There are also other cases, where the limestone is not necessarily highly crystalline, and where no metamorphic action in the strict sense has taken place, in which, nevertheless, the microscope fails to reveal any evidence that the rock is organic. Such cases are somewhat obscure, and doubtless depend on different causes in different instances; but they do not affect the important generalisation that limestones are fundamentally the product of the operation of living beings. This fact remains certain; and when we consider the vast superficial extent occupied by calcareous deposits, and the enormous collective thickness of these, the mind cannot fail to be impressed with the immensity of the period demanded for the formation of these by the agency of such humble and often microscopic creatures as Corals, Sea-lilies, Foraminifers, and Shell-fish.

Amongst the numerous varieties of limestone, a few are of such interest as to deserve a brief notice. Magnesian limestone or dolomite, differs from ordinary limestone in containing a certain proportion of carbonate of magnesia along with the carbonate of lime. The typical dolomites contain a large proportion of carbonate of magnesia, and are highly crystalline. The ordinary magnesian limestones (such as those of Durham in the Permian series, and the Guelph Limestones of North America in the Silurian series) are generally of a yellowish, buff, or brown colour, with a crystalline or pearly aspect, effervescing with acid much less freely than ordinary limestone, exhibiting numerous cavities from which fossils have been dissolved out, and often assuming the most varied and singular forms in consequence of what is called "concretionary action." Examination with the microscope shows that these limestones are composed of an aggregate of minute but perfectly distinct crystals, but that minute organisms of different kinds, or fragments of larger fossils, are often present as well. Other magnesian limestones, again, exhibit no striking external peculiarities by which the presence of magnesia would be readily recognised, and though the base of the rock is crystalline, they are replete with the remains of organised beings. Thus many of the magnesian limestones of the Carboniferous series of the North of England are very like ordinary limestone to look at, though effervescing less freely with acids, and the microscope proves them to be charged with the remains of Foraminifera and other minute organisms.

Marbles are of various kinds, all limestones which are sufficiently hard and compact to take a high polish going by this name. Statuary marble, and most of the celebrated foreign marbles, are "metamorphic" rocks, of a highly crystalline nature, and having all traces of their primitive organic structure obliterated. Many other marbles, however, differ from ordinary limestone simply in the matter of density. Thus, many marbles (such as Derbyshire marble) are simply "crinoidal limestones" (fig. 9); whilst various other British marbles exhibit innumerable organic remains under the microscope. Black marbles owe their colour to the presence of very minute particles of carbonaceous matter, in some cases at any rate; and they may either be metamorphic, or they may be charged with minute fossils such as Foraminifera (e.g., the black limestones of Ireland, and the black marble of Dent, in Yorkshire).

"Oolitic" limestones, or "oolites," as they are often called, are of interest both to the palæontologist and geologist. The peculiar structure to which they owe their name is that the rock is more or less entirely composed of spheroidal or oval grains, which vary in size from the head of a small pin or less up to the size of a pea, and which may be in almost immediate contact with one another, or may be cemented together by a more or less abundant calcareous matrix. When the grains are pretty nearly spherical and are in tolerably close contact, the rock looks very like the roe of a fish, and the name of "oolite" or "egg-stone" is in allusion to this. When the grains are of the size of peas or upwards, the rock is often called a "pisolite" (Lat. pisum, a pea). Limestones having this peculiar structure are especially abundant in the Jurassic formation, which is often called the "Oolitic series" for this reason; but essentially similar limestones occur not uncommonly in the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous formations, and, indeed, in almost all rock-groups in which limestones are largely developed. Whatever may be the age of the formation in which they occur, and whatever may be the size of their component "eggs," the structure of oolitic limestones is fundamentally the same. All the ordinary oolitic limestones, namely, consist of little spherical or ovoid "concretions," as they are termed, cemented together by a larger or smaller amount of crystalline carbonate of lime, together, in many instances, with numerous organic remains of different kinds

Fig. 13.—Slice of oolitic limestone from the Jurassic series (Coral Rag) of Weymouth; magnified. (Original.) (fig. 13). When examined in polished slabs, or in thin sections prepared for the microscope, each of these little concretions is seen to consist of numerous concentric coats of carbonate of lime, which sometimes simply surround an imaginary centre, but which, more commonly, have been successively deposited round some foreign body, such as a little crystal of quartz, a cluster of sand-grains, or a minute shell. In other cases, as in some of the beds of the Carboniferous limestone in the North of England, where the limestone is highly "arenaceous," there is a modification of the oolitic structure. Microscopic sections of these sandy limestones (fig. 14) show numerous generally angular or oval grains of silica or flint, each of which is commonly surrounded by a thin coating of carbonate of lime, or sometimes by several such coats, the whole being cemented together along with the shells of Foraminifera and other minute fossils by a matrix of crystalline calcite. As compared with typical oolites, the concretions in these limestones are usually much more irregular in shape, often lengthened out and almost cylindrical, at other times angular, the central nucleus

Fig. 14.—Slice of arenaceous and oolitic limestone from the Carboniferous series of Shap, Westmoreland; magnified. The section also exhibit Foraminifera and other minute fossils. (Original.) being of large size, and the surrounding envelope of lime being very thin, and often exhibiting no concentric structure. In both these and the ordinary oolites, the structure is fundamentally the same. Both have been formed in a sea, probably of no great depth, the waters of which were charged with carbonate of lime in solution, whilst the bottom was formed of sand intermixed with minute shells and fragments of the skeletons of larger marine animals. The excess of lime in the sea-water was precipitated round the sand-grams, or round the smaller shells, as so many nuclei, and this precipitation must often have taken place time after time, so as to give rise to the concentric structure so characteristic of oolitic concretions. Finally, the oolitic grains thus produced were cemented together by a further precipitation of crystalline carbonate of lime from the waters of the ocean.

Phosphate of Lime is another lime-salt, which is of interest to the palæontologist. It does not occur largely in the stratified series, but it is found in considerable beds [4] in the Laurentian formation, and less abundantly in some later rock-groups, whilst it occurs abundantly in the form of nodules in parts of the Cretaceous (Upper Greensand) and Tertiary deposits. Phosphate of lime forms the larger proportion of the earthy matters of the bones of Vertebrate animals, and also occurs in less amount in the skeletons of certain of the Invertebrates (e.g., Crustacea). It is, indeed, perhaps more distinctively than carbonate of lime, an organic compound; and though the formation of many known deposits of phosphate of lime cannot be positively shown to be connected with the previous operation of living beings, there is room for doubt whether this salt is not in reality always primarily a product of vital action. The phosphatic nodules of the Upper Greensand are erroneously called "coprolites," from the belief originally entertained that they were the droppings or fossilised excrements of extinct animals; and though this is not the case, there can be little doubt but that the phosphate of lime which they contain is in this instance of organic origin.[5] It appears, in fact, that decaying animal matter has a singular power of determining the precipitation around it of mineral salts dissolved in water. Thus, when any animal bodies are undergoing decay at the bottom of the sea, they have a tendency to cause the precipitation from the surrounding water of any mineral matters which may be dissolved in it; and the organic body thus becomes a centre round which the mineral matters in question are deposited in the form of a "concretion" or "nodule." The phosphatic nodules in question were formed in a sea in which phosphate of lime, derived from the destruction of animal skeletons, was held largely in solution; and a precipitation of it took place round any body, such as a decaying animal substance, which happened to be lying on the sea-bottom, and which offered itself as a favourable nucleus. In the same way we may explain the formation of the calcareous nodules, known as "septaria" or "cement stones," which occur so commonly in the London Clay and Kimmeridge Clay, and in which the principal ingredient is carbonate of lime. A similar origin is to be ascribed to the nodules of clay iron-stone (impure carbonate of iron) which occur so abundantly in the shales of the Carboniferous series and in other argillaceous deposits; and a parallel modern example is to be found in the nodules of manganese, which were found by Sir Wyville Thomson, in the Challenger, to be so numerously scattered over the floor of the Pacific at great depths. In accordance with this mode of origin, it is exceedingly common to find in the centre of all these nodules, both old and new, some organic body, such as a bone, a shell, or a tooth, which acted as the original nucleus of precipitation, and was thus preserved in a shroud of mineral matter. Many nodules, it is true, show no such nucleus; but it has been affirmed that all of them can be shown, by appropriate microscopical investigation, to have been formed round an original organic body to begin with (Hawkins Johnson).

[Footnote 4: Apart from the occurrence or phosphate of lime in actual beds in the stratified rocks, as in the Laurentian and Silurian series, this salt may also occur disseminated through the rock, when it can only be detected by chemical analysis. It is interesting to note that Dr Hicks has recently proved the occurrence of phosphate of lime in this disseminated form in rocks as old as the Cambrian, and that in quantity quite equal to what is generally found to be present in the later fossiliferous rocks. This affords a chemical proof that animal life flourished abundantly in the Cambrian seas.]