Life's Dawn on Earth / Being the history of the oldest known fossil remains, and their relations to geological time and to the development of the animal kingdom

by Sir John William Dawson

Fig. 47. Diagram of Wall and Tubes of Receptaculites. (After Billings.)

(b.) Inner wall. (c.) Outer wall. (d.) Section of plates. (e.) Pore of inner wall. (f.) Canal of inner wall. (g.) Radial stolon. (h.) Cyclical stolon. (k.) Suture of plates of outer wall.

Fig. 48. Receptaculites, Inner Surface of Outer Wall with the Stolons remaining on its Surface. (After Billings.)

I might trace these ancient forms of foraminiferal life further up in the geological series, and show how in the Carboniferous there are nummulitic shells conforming to the general type of Eozoon, and in some cases making up the mass of great limestones.[AL] Further, in the great chalk series and its allied beds, and in the Lower Tertiary, there are not only vast foraminiferal limestones, but gigantic species reminding us of Stromatopora and Eozoon.[AM] Lastly, more diminutive species are doing similar work on a great scale in the modern ocean. Thus we may gather up the broken links of the chain of foraminiferal life, and affirm that Eozoon has never wanted some representative to uphold its family and function throughout all the vast lapse of geological time.

[AL] Fusulina, as recently described by Carpenter, Archæodiscus of Brady, and the Nummulite recently found in the Carboniferous of Belgium.

[AM] Parkeria and Loftusia of Carpenter.