The course of creation

by John Anderson

The Permian system of strata has hitherto been noted for the introduction of walking, air-breathing animals; hence it has been a canon of the science, that in these deposits lie entombed the last links of that ancient chain of organic life which prevailed from the beginning, and also the first terms of the new series which attained to such monstrosities and prolific exuberance in the succeeding epoch. Doubtful as to the existence of reptilian and ornithic creatures during the carboniferous period, both forms of creation are here distinctly manifested; and, in the higher members of the triassic group, birds and reptiles have left traces of their path. Thus remarkably defined, in an invariable chronological series, was the new red sandstone formation; all the ancient types of organic life were disappearing; completely new forms had just begun to replace them. But, while we are writing, the discovery has been announced that, so old as the devonian age, reptiles existed; alligator-like foot-prints, in regular alternating order, have been found impressed in the old red sandstone, near Pottsville in Pennsylvania, and by Mr. Lea, their discoverer and American conchologist, the animal which owned them has been named the Sauropus Primævus. A revolution in geology is decreed in the words. Many divisions in the systems of rocks will have to be revised, many distinctions altogether obliterated, theories of development and of many other things are now sadly misplaced, and out of keeping with the newly-declared order and progress of organic life.[7]

But without venturing at present to enter upon the consequences to palæontology involved in this important discovery, we proceed with the known and recognized history of the formation in question.

The organic remains contained in the upper, or triassic group, differ considerably from those of the lower division of beds.—While the same families of vegetable fossils are preserved which characterized the coal-measures, the particular species and genera have disappeared. About twenty species of ferns and coniferæ, a few calamites, several fucoid plants, and a gigantic genus named Voltzia, and resembling the Araucaria or Norfolk Island fir, comprise the thinly-scattered specimens of the flora of the period. The quarries at Coventry yield some undetermined stems of trees, and leaves like those of our thick-ribbed cabbages have been found in the strata near Liverpool. The animal remains are more numerous as well as varied in their structures; some, indeed, altogether anomalous in their organization, and foot-prints of the most puzzling characters and dimensions. There are several new types of mollusca and crinoidea, among the latter the Encrinus formosus, one of the most beautiful forms in any department of the animal kingdom. The fishes of the placoid order consist of seven genera and fourteen species, of ganoids three genera and seven species. The reptilia supply the marvels of the period. Prof. Owen has described six distinct genera from these singular fossils, in which he has established an affinity to the batrachia. From the curiously-complicated texture of the teeth, the term labyrinthodon has been given to one genus, while the same authority suggests, that the foot-impressions to which the term cheirotherium had already been applied, might belong to this animal. The two genera, claydyodon and rhyncosaurus, are remarkable specimens of organic structure, the latter combining the lacertian type of skull, with edentulous jaws, which impart to the forepart of the head the profile of a parrot.

II. The Ichnolites, or foot-prints, constitute a marked feature of the formation. These geological phenomena were first introduced to the notice of the public, about twenty years ago, by the late Dr. Duncan of Ruthwell, when his announcement of the tracks and foot-marks of animals along the ancient shores of Dumfries-shire created a sensation among all classes hitherto unprecedented in the history of the fossil department of the science. Robinson Crusoe was not more moved at the discovery of a human foot-print on the sands of his lonely island in the distant main, than were men of science, that traces of organic life should thus be stereotyped in a deposit believed to be utterly destitute of fossil relics. The creatures which had traced them, so like to existing walking things, greatly increased the interest and the wonder excited by the picture—the tread in all the freshness of yesterday of the inhabitants of the antediluvian world! The phenomenon, however, is now one of very general and common occurrence, several quarries in the same locality—various places in England—in Saxony—in the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia—having since been found to yield the impressions in the greatest abundance, and of numerous types and forms. And so well delineated and perfect are the impressions, that, in the absence of any other reminiscence of the animal, these characters have supplied the same aid to the skillful palæontologist that the fragment of a bone, a fin, or a scale, did to Cuvier and Agassiz, in the reconstruction of their organic models, and determination of extinct genera and species. Birds and reptilian quadrupeds have all contributed their share in the production of these curious lithographs. Small toe-looking scratches, deep-palmy impressions, cloven hoof-like indentations, and large gigantic hollows, have all been pictured in clear distinct outline, covered up, and now again laid patent before you as by the removal of the coverlit of your album. The Boston “Journal of Natural History” communicates the following interesting account of the researches of Dr. Deane:—“I have in my possession,” he says, “consecutive impressions of tridactyle feet, which measure eighteen inches in length, by fourteen in breadth, between the extremities of the lateral toes. Each footstep will hold half a gallon of water, and the stride is four feet. The original bird must have been four or five times larger than the African ostrich, and therefore could not have weighed less than 600 pounds. Every step the creature took sank deep, and the substrata bent beneath the enormous load. If an ox walk over stiffened clay, he would not sink so deeply as did this tremendous bird.” Sir C. Lyell has examined most of the foot-print districts in America, and found the markings so numerous in some places as to resemble the puddled stand of a sheep-fold or market-place; the very spots, doubtless, whither the animals had resorted to quench their thirst, or screen them at mid-day from the scorching heat. The various tracings become more distinct in proportion to the distance from the scene of common rendezvous, and the several routes by which they would return to their respective haunts, or fields of pasturage, are clearly defined.

A considerable doubt hung over the accounts from time to time detailed in the American journals and other publications, concerning these novel and extraordinary discoveries, until they were more than matched by the actual exhumation of the entire skeletons of the feathery tribes, far exceeding in dimensions anything hitherto dreamed of in the science of ornithology. The collections of Mr. Williams, and of Mr. W. Mantell, from the alluvial deposits of New Zealand, utterly confounded all previous calculations as to the size and bulk attainable by the bird tribe. The tibia of a Dinornis, in the collection of the University of Edinburgh, measures thirty-one inches in length, a femur seventeen inches, the average circumference of both being nearly twelve inches. From the foot to the top of the clavicle, the animal must have stood at least thirteen feet in height. With the strut of the turkey, or the pride of the peacock—head and neck of corresponding altitude—what a denizen for the wilds and forests of this region of the new world! When animals of similar dimensions, but of an earlier epoch, frequented the beaches of Great Britain, we have to imagine the Cumbrian mountains, the Penine chain, Derby Peak, and the lofty cliffs of Avon, surrounded by an inland sea stretching by central France, the Black Forest, and the Hartz mountains, and the shores all round silted with the materials which now constitute the triassic group. Tortoises, turtles, bird-headed lizards, birds themselves, salamander and frog-like creatures larger than crocodiles, resorted as now to the sea-shore, in the cool fresh of the evening or as tide-mark permitted, and regaled themselves at will on the food which an ever-bounteous element furnished to their various wants.

The science which, from such indicia as these, has succeeded in determining not only the class, but the very form and habits, of the animals which impressed them—no other traces remaining than those petrified footsteps, covered up and hidden for ages—presents subjects of study to the inquiring mind, which may well rank among the most valuable, as well as curious, of human research. Is it not wonderful enough, that organic impressions merely should have been transmitted so fresh and entire, as to admit of classification, equal in scientific precision to that of the families of living things? What matter of suggestive reflection, inscribed on every page of that history? The tribes which were created and flourished during the Permian-triassic age perished, their earthy parts in most cases were all again absorbed by the earth, dissipated or melted into the viewless air. Still there are memorials of their existence, enduring and indelible, not of bones and sinews, but of actions and habits, which the waters cannot obliterate, nor the floods wash away! Man, a being of a different mold,—and with him

“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand?”

was the cry of instinctive dread—the foreboding of an assured conscience, that the foul and guilty deed could never be effaced from the memory, nor blotted from the records of creation. The foot-tread of the robber has tracked him to his den; the minutest stain of blood has established the crime of murder; a dream or vision of the night has pointed to the mangled corse; a word uttered years after all was forgotten, or a rude ditty chanted, have recalled the pictures of infancy, and the wanderer to his home. Here we behold, stamped upon the rock, legible as the law upon the tablets of the heart, intimations of the great universal law, that an act once committed cannot be canceled; that a cause will be followed by a sequence of effects; indefinite and ever-extending; and that the Divine Spirit, which drew illustrations from the fields and taught wisdom among the rocks of Horeb, still points the moral in these ineffaceable memorials—that the recording angel so traces in the book of life the story of every age, of every generation, of every individual, never to be lost nor forgotten in that eternity whither their works do all follow them.