J. D. Hooker - "Himalayan Journals (Complete)"

Douglas Jerrold - "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures"

Peter B. Kyne - "The Long Chance"

Alexander Mackenzie - "History Of The Mackenzies"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
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FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
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Books: The Elements of Geology

W >> William Harmon Norton >> The Elements of Geology




Contrast the small fore limbs, used only for grasping, with the
powerful hind limbs on which the animal stalked about. Some of the
species of this group seem to have been able to progress by
leaping in kangaroo fashion. Notice the sharp claws, the ponderous
tail, and the skull set at right angles with the spinal column.
The limb bones are hollow. The ceratosaurs reached a length of
some fifteen feet, and were not uncommon in Colorado and the
western lands in Jurassic times.

The REPTILE-FOOTED DINOSAURS (Sauropoda) include some of the
biggest brutes which ever trod the ground. One of the largest,
whose remains are found entombed in the Jurassic rocks of Wyoming
and Colorado, is shown in Figure 330.

Note the five digits on the hind feet, the quadrupedal gait, the
enormous stretch of neck and tail, the small head aligned with the
vertebral column. Diplodocus was fully sixty-five feet long and
must have weighed about twenty tons. The thigh bones of the
Sauropoda are the largest bones which ever grew. That of a genus
allied to the Diplodocus measures six feet and eight inches, and
the total length of the animal must have been not far from eighty
feet, the largest land animal known.

The Sauropoda became extinct when their haunts along the rivers
and lakes of the western plains of Jurassic times were invaded by
the Cretaceous interior sea.

The BEAKED DINOSAURS(Predentata) were distinguished by a beak
sheathed with horn carried in front of the tooth-set jaw, and
used, we may imagine, in stripping the leaves and twigs of trees
and shrubs. We may notice only two of the most interesting types.

STEGOSAURUS (plated reptile) takes its name from the double row of
bony plates arranged along its back. The powerful tail was armed
with long spines, and the thick skin was defended with irregular
bits of bone implanted in it. The brain of the stegosaur was
smaller than that of any land vertebrate, while in the sacrum the
nerve canal was enlarged to ten times the capacity of the brain
cavity of the skull. Despite their feeble wits, this well-armored
family lived on through millions of years which intervened between
their appearance, at the opening of the Jurassic, and the close of
the Cretaceous, when they became extinct.

A less stupid brute than the stegosaur was TRICERATOPS, the
dinosaur of the three horns,--one horn carried on the nose, and a
massive pair set over the eyes. Note the enormous wedge-shaped
skull, with its sharp beak, and the hood behind resembling a
fireman's helmet. Triceratops was fully twenty-five feet long, and
of twice the bulk of an elephant. The family appeared in the Upper
Cretaceous and became extinct at its close. Their bones are found
buried in the fresh-water deposits of the time from Colorado to
Montana and eastward to the Dakotas.

MARINE REPTILES. In the ocean, reptiles occupied the place now
held by the aquatic mammals, such as whales and dolphins, and
their form and structure were similarly modified to suit their
environment. In the Ichthyosaurus (fish reptile), for example, the
body was fishlike in form, with short neck and large, pointed head
(Fig. 333).

A powerful tail, whose flukes were set vertical, and the lower one
of which was vertebrated, served as propeller, while a large
dorsal fin was developed as a cutwater. The primitive biconcave
vertebrae of the fish and of the early land vertebrates were
retained, and the limbs degenerated into short paddles. The skin
of the ichthyosaur was smooth like that of a whale, and its food
was largely fish and cephalopods, as the fossil contents of its
stomach prove.

These sea monsters disported along the Pacific shore over northern
California in Triassic times, and the bones of immense members of
the family occur in the Jurassic strata of Wyoming. Like whales
and seals, the ichthyosaurs were descended from land vertebrates
which had become adapted to a marine habitat.

PLESIOSAURS were another order which ranged throughout the
Mesozoic. Descended from small amphibious animals, they later
included great marine reptiles, characterized in the typical genus
by long neck, snakelike head, and immense paddles. They swam in
the Cretaceous interior sea of western North America.

MOSASAURS belong to the same order as do snakes and lizards, and
are an offshoot of the same ancestral line of land reptiles. These
snakelike creatures--which measured as much as forty-five feet in
length--abounded in the Cretaceous seas. They had large conical
teeth, and their limbs had become stout paddles.

The lower jaw of the mosasaur was jointed; the quadrate bone,
which in all reptiles connects the bone of the lower jaw with the
skull, was movable, and as in snakes the lower jaw could be used
in thrusting prey down the throat. The family became extinct at
the end of the Mesozoic, and left no descendants. One may imitate
the movement of the lower jaw of the mosasaur by extending the
arms, clasping the hands, and bending the elbows.

FLYING REPTILES. The atmosphere, which had hitherto been tenanted
only by insects, was first conquered by the vertebrates in the
Mesozoic. Pterosaurs, winged reptiles, whose whole organism was
adapted for flight through the air, appeared in the Jurassic and
passed off the stage of existence before the end of the
Cretaceous. The bones were hollow, as are those of birds. The
sternum, or breastbone, was given a keel for the attachment of the
wing muscles. The fifth finger, prodigiously lengthened, was
turned backward to support a membrane which was attached to the
body and extended to the base of the tail. The other fingers were
free, and armed with sharp and delicate claws, as shown in Figures
336 and 337.

These "dragons of the air" varied greatly in size; some were as
small as sparrows, while others surpassed in stretch of wing the
largest birds of the present day. They may be divided into two
groups. The earliest group comprises genera with jaws set with
teeth, and with long tails sometimes provided with a rudderlike
expansion at the end. In their successors of the later group the
tail had become short, and in some of the genera the teeth had
disappeared. Among the latest of the flying reptiles was
ORNITHOSTOMA (bird beak), the largest creature which ever flew,
and whose remains are imbedded in the offshore deposits of the
Cretaceous sea which held sway over our western plains.
Ornithostoma's spread of wings was twenty feet. Its bones were a
marvel of lightness, the entire skeleton, even in its petrified
condition, not weighing more than five or six pounds. The sharp
beak, a yard long, was toothless and bird-like, as its name
suggests

BIRDS. The earliest known birds are found in the Jurassic, and
during the remainder of the Mesozoic they contended with the
flying reptiles for the empire of the air. The first feathered
creatures were very different from the birds of to-day. Their
characteristics prove them an offshoot of the dinosaur line of
reptiles. ARCHAEOPTERYX (ANCIENT BIRD) (Fig. 338) exhibits a
strange mingling of bird and reptile. Like birds, it was fledged
with perfect feathers, at least on wings and tail, but it retained
the teeth of the reptile, and its long tail was vertebrated, a
pair of feathers springing from each joint. Throughout the
Jurassic and Cretaceous the remains of birds are far less common
than those of flying reptiles, and strata representing hundreds of
thousands of years intervene between Archaeopteryx and the next
birds of which we know, whose skeletons occur in the Cretaceous
beds of western Kansas.

MAMMALS. So far as the entries upon the geological record show,
mammals made their advent in a very humble way during the Trias.
These earliest of vertebrates which suckle their young were no
bigger than young kittens, and their strong affinities with the
theromorphs suggest that their ancestors are to be found among
some generalized types of that order of reptiles.

During the long ages of the Mesozoic, mammals continued small and
few, and were completely dominated by the reptiles. Their remains
are exceedingly rare, and consist of minute scattered teeth,--with
an occasional detached jaw,--which prove them to have been flesh
or insect eaters. In the same way their affinities are seen to be
with the lowest of mammals,--the MONOTREMES and MARSUPIALS. The
monotremes,--such as the duckbill mole and the spiny ant-eater of
Australia, reproduce by means of eggs resembling those of
reptiles; the marsupials, such as the opossum and the kangaroo,
bring forth their young alive, but in a very immature condition,
and carry them for some time after birth in the marsupium, a pouch
on the ventral side of the body.





CHAPTER XXI

THE TERTIARY


THE CENOZOIC ERA. The last stages of the Cretaceous are marked by
a decadence of the reptiles. By the end of that period the
reptilian forms characteristic of the time had become extinct one
after another, leaving to represent the class only the types of
reptiles which continue to modern times. The day of the ammonite
and the belemnite also now drew to a close, and only a few of
these cephalopods were left to survive the period. It is therefore
at the close of the Cretaceous that the line is drawn which marks
the end of the Middle Age of geology and the beginning of the
Cenozoic era, the era of modern life,--the Age of Mammals.

In place of the giant reptiles, mammals now become masters of the
land, appearing first in generalized types which, during the long
ages of the era, gradually evolve to higher forms, more
specialized and ever more closely resembling the mammals of the
present. In the atmosphere the flying dragons of the Mesozoic give
place to birds and bats. In the sea, whales, sharks, and teleost
fishes of modern types rule in the stead of huge swimming
reptiles. The lower vertebrates, the invertebrates of land and
sea, and the plants of field and forest take on a modern aspect,
and differ little more from those of to-day than the plants and
animals of different countries now differ from one another. From
the beginning of the Cenozoic era until now there is a steadily
increasing number of species of animals and plants which have
continued to exist to the present time.

The Cenozoic era comprises two divisions,--the TERTIARY period and
the QUATERNARY period.

In the early days of geology the formations of the entire
geological record, so far as it was then known, were divided into
three groups,--the PRIMARY, the SECONDARY (now known as the
Mesozoic), and the TERTIARY, When the third group was subdivided
into two systems, the term Tertiary was retained for the first
system of the two, while the term QUATERNARY was used to designate
the second.

DIVISIONS OF THE TERTIARY. The formations of the Tertiary are
grouped in three divisions,--the PLIOCENE (more recent), the
MIOCENE (less recent), and the EOCENE (the dawn of the recent).
Each of these epochs is long and complex. Their various sub-
divisions are distinguished each by its own peculiar organisms,
and the changes of physical geography recorded in their strata. In
the rapid view which we are compelled to take we can note only a
few of the most conspicuous events of the period.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE TERTIARY IN EASTERN NORTH AMERICA. The
Tertiary rocks of eastern North America are marine deposits and
occupy the coastal lowlands of the Atlantic and Gulf states (Fig.
260). In New England, Tertiary beds occur on the island of
Martha's Vineyard, but not on the mainland; hence the shore line
here stood somewhat farther out than now. From New Jersey
southward the earliest Tertiary sands and clays, still
unconsolidated, leave only a narrow strip of the edge of the
Cretaceous between them and the Triassic and crystalline rocks of
the Piedmont oldland; hence the Atlantic shore here stood farther
in than now, and at the beginning of the period the present
coastal plain was continental delta. A broad belt of Tertiary sea-
laid limestones, sandstones, and shales surrounds the Gulf of
Mexico and extends northward up the Mississippi embayment to the
mouth of the Ohio River; hence the Gulf was then larger than at
present, and its waters reached in a broad bay far up the
Mississippi valley.

Along the Atlantic coast the Mesozoic peneplain may be traced
shoreward to where it disappears from view beneath an
unconformable cover of early Tertiary marine strata. The beginning
of the Tertiary was therefore marked by a subsidence. The wide
erosion surface which at the close of the Mesozoic lay near sea
level where the Appalachian Mountains and their neighboring
plateaus and uplands now stand was lowered gently along its
seaward edge beneath the Tertiary Atlantic to receive a cover of
its sediments.

As the period progressed slight oscillations occurred from time to
time. Strips of coastal plain were added to the land, and as early
as the close of the Miocene the shore lines of the Atlantic and
Gulf states had reached well-nigh their present place. Louisiana
and Florida were the last areas to emerge wholly from the sea,--
Florida being formed by a broad transverse upwarp of the
continental delta at the opening of the Miocene, forming first an
island, which afterwards was joined to the mainland.

THE PACIFIC COAST. Tertiary deposits with marine fossils occur
along the western foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, and are
crumpled among the mountain masses of the Coast Ranges; it is
hence inferred that the Great Valley of California was then a
border sea, separated from the ocean by a chain of mountainous
islands which were upridged into the Coast Ranges at a still later
time. Tertiary marine strata are spread over the lower Columbia
valley and that of Puget Sound, showing that the Pacific came in
broadly there.

THE INTERIOR OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. The closing stages of
the Mesozoic were marked, as we have seen, by the upheaval of the
Rocky Mountains and other western ranges. The bases of the
mountains are now skirted by widespread Tertiary deposits, which
form the highest strata of the lofty plateaus from the level of
whose summits the mountains rise. Like the recent alluvium of the
Great Valley of California, these deposits imply low-lying lands
when they were laid, and therefore at that time the mountains rose
from near sea level. But the height at which the Tertiary strata
now stand--five thousand feet above the sea at Denver, and twice
that height in the plateaus of southern Utah--proves that the
plateaus of which the Tertiary strata form a part have been
uplifted during the Cenozoic. During their uplift, warping formed
extensive basins both east and west of the Rockies, and in these
basins stream-swept and lake-laid waste gathered to depths of
hundreds and thousands of feet, as it is accumulating at present
in the Great Valley of California and on the river plains of
Turkestan. The Tertiary river deposits of the High Plains have
already been described. How widespread are these ancient river
plains and beds of fresh-water lakes may be seen in the map of
Figure 260.

THE BAD LANDS. In several of the western states large areas of
Tertiary fresh-water deposits have been dissected to a maze of
hills whose steep sides are cut with innumerable ravines. The
deposits of these ancient river plains and lake beds are little
cemented and because of the dryness of the climate are unprotected
by vegetation; hence they are easily carved by the wet-weather
rills of scanty and infrequent rains. These waterless, rugged
surfaces were named by the early French explorers the BAD LANDS
because they were found so difficult to traverse. The strata of
the Bad Lands contain vast numbers of the remains of the animals
of Tertiary times, and the large amount of barren surface exposed
to view makes search for fossils easy and fruitful. These desolate
tracts are therefore frequently visited by scientific collecting
expeditions.

MOUNTAIN MAKING IN THE TERTIARY. The Tertiary period included
epochs when the earth's crust was singularly unquiet. From time to
time on all the continents subterranean forces gathered head, and
the crust was bent and broken and upridged in lofty mountains.

The Sierra Nevada range was formed, as we have seen, by strata
crumpling at the end of the Jurassic. But since that remote time
the upfolded mountains had been worn to plains and hilly uplands,
the remnants of whose uplifted erosion surfaces may now be traced
along the western mountain slopes. Beginning late in the Tertiary,
the region was again affected by mountain-making movements. A
series of displacements along a profound fault on the eastern side
tilted the enormous earth block of the Sierras to the west,
lifting its eastern edge to form the lofty crest and giving to the
range a steep eastern front and a gentle descent toward the
Pacific.

The Coast Ranges also have had a complex history with many
vicissitudes. The earliest foldings of their strata belong to the
close of the Jurassic, but it was not until the end of the Miocene
that the line of mountainous islands and the heavy sediments which
had been deposited on their submerged flanks were crushed into a
continuous mountain chain. Thick Pliocene beds upon their sides
prove that they were depressed to near sea level during the later
Tertiary. At the close of the Pliocene the Coast Ranges rose along
with the upheaval of the Sierra, and their gradual uplift has
continued to the present time.

The numerous north-south ranges of the Great Basin and the Mount
Saint Elias range of Alaska were also uptilted during the
Tertiary.

During the Tertiary period many of the loftiest mountains of the
earth--the Alps, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, the Atlas, the
Caucasus, and the Himalayas--received the uplift to which they owe
most of their colossal bulk and height, as portions of the
Tertiary sea beds now found high upon their flanks attest. In the
Himalayas, Tertiary marine limestones occur sixteen thousand five
hundred feet above sea level.

VOLCANIC ACTIVITY IN THE TERTIARY. The vast deformations of the
Tertiary were accompanied on a corresponding scale by outpourings
of lava, the outburst of volcanoes, and the intrusion of molten
masses within the crust. In the Sierra Nevadas the Miocene river
gravels of the valleys of the western slope, with their placer
deposits of gold, were buried beneath streams of lava and beds of
tuff. Volcanoes broke forth along the Rocky Mountains and on the
plateaus of Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Mount Shasta and the immense volcanic piles of the Cascades date
from this period. The mountain basin of the Yellowstone Park was
filled to a depth of several thousand feet with tuffs and lavas,
the oldest dating as far back as the beginning of the Tertiary.
Crandall volcano was reared in the Miocene and the latest
eruptions of the Park are far more recent.

THE COLUMBIA AND SNAKE RIVER LAVAS. Still more important is the
plateau of lava, more than two hundred thousand square miles in
area, extending from the Yellowstone Park to the Cascade
Mountains, which has been built from Miocene times to the present.

Over this plateau, which occupies large portions of Idaho,
Washington, and Oregon, and extends into northern California and
Nevada, the country rock is basaltic lava. For thousands of square
miles the surface is a lava plain which meets the boundary
mountains as a lake or sea meets a rugged and deeply indented
coast. The floods of molten rock spread up the mountain valleys
for a score of miles and more, the intervening spurs rising above
the lava like long peninsulas, while here and there an isolated
peak was left to tower above the inundation like an island off a
submerged shore.

The rivers which drain the plateau--the Snake, the Columbia, and
their tributaries--have deeply trenched it, yet their canyons,
which reach the depth of several thousand feet, have not been worn
to the base of the lava except near the margin and where they cut
the summits of mountains drowned beneath the flood. Here and there
the plateau has been deformed. It has been upbent into great
folds, and broken into immense blocks of bedded lava, forming
mountain ranges, which run parallel with the Pacific coast line.
On the edges of these tilted blocks the thickness of the lava is
seen to be fully five thousand feet. The plateau has been built,
like that of Iceland, of innumerable overlapping sheets of lava.
On the canyon walls they weather back in horizontal terraces and
long talus slopes. One may distinguish each successive flow by its
dense central portion, often jointed with large vertical columns,
and the upper portion with its mass of confused irregular columns
and scoriaceous surface. The average thickness of the flows seems
to be about seventy-five feet.

The plateau was long in building. Between the layers are found in
places old soil beds and forest grounds and the sediments of
lakes. Hence the interval between the flows in any locality was
sometimes long enough for clays to gather in the lakes which
filled depressions in the surface. Again and again the surface of
the black basalt was reddened by oxidation and decayed to soil,
and forests had time to grow upon it before the succeeding
inundation sealed the sediments and soils away beneath a sheet of
stone. Near the edges of the lava plain, rivers from the
surrounding mountains spread sheets of sand and gravel on the
surface of one flow after another. These pervious sands,
interbedded with the lava, become the aquifers of artesian wells.

In places the lavas rest on extensive lake deposits, one thousand
feet deep, and Miocene in age as their fossils prove. It is to the
middle Tertiary, then, that the earliest flows and the largest
bulk of the great inundation belong. So ancient are the latest
floods in the Columbia basin that they have weathered to a
residual yellow clay from thirty to sixty feet in depth and
marvelously rich in the mineral substances on which plants feed.

In the Snake River valley the latest lavas are much younger. Their
surfaces are so fresh and undecayed that here the effusive
eruptions may well have continued to within the period of human
history. Low lava domes like those of Iceland mark where last the
basalt outwelled and spread far and wide before it chilled (Fig.
341). In places small mounds of scoria show that the eruptions
were accompanied to a slight degree by explosions of steam. So
fluid was this superheated lava that recent flows have been traced
for more than fifty miles.

The rocks underlying the Columbia lavas, where exposed to view,
are seen to be cut by numerous great dikes of dense basalt, which
mark the fissures through which the molten rock rose to the
surface.

The Tertiary included times of widespread and intense volcanic
action in other continents as well as in North America. In Europe,
Vesuvius and Etna began their career as submarine volcanoes in
connection with earth movements which finally lifted Pliocene
deposits in Sicily to their present height,--four thousand feet
above the sea. Volcanoes broke forth in central France and
southern Germany, in Hungary and the Carpathians. Innumerable
fissures opened in the crust from the north of Ireland and the
western islands of Scotland to the Faroes, Iceland, and even to
arctic Greenland; and here great plateaus were built of flows of
basalt similar to that of the Columbia River. In India, at the
opening of the Tertiary, there had been an outwelling of basalt,
flooding to a depth of thousands of feet two hundred thousand
square miles of the northwestern part of the peninsula, and
similar inundations of lava occurred where are now the table-lands
of Abyssinia. From the middle Tertiary on, Asia Minor, Arabia, and
Persia were the scenes of volcanic action. In Palestine the rise
of the uplands of Judea at the close of the Eocene, and the
downfaulting of the Jordan valley were followed by volcanic
outbursts. In comparison with the middle Tertiary, the present is
a time of volcanic inactivity and repose.

EROSION OF TERTIARY MOUNTAINS AND PLATEAUS. The mountains and
plateaus built at various times during the Tertiary and at its
commencement have been profoundly carved by erosive agents. The
Sierra Nevada Mountains have been dissected on the western slope
by such canyons as those of King's River and the Yosemite. Six
miles of strata have been denuded from parts of the Wasatch
Mountains since their rise at the beginning of the era. From the
Colorado plateaus, whose uplift dates from the same time, there
have been stripped off ten thousand feet of strata over thousands
of square miles, and the colossal canyon of the Colorado has been
cut after this great denudation had been mostly accomplished.

On the eastern side of the continent, as we have seen, a broad
peneplain had been developed by the close of the Cretaceous. The
remnants of this old erosion surface are now found upwarped to
various heights in different portions of its area. In southern New
England it now stands fifteen hundred feet above the sea in
western Massachusetts, declining thence southward and eastward to
sea level at the coast. In southwestern Virginia it has been
lifted to four thousand feet above the sea. Manifestly this upwarp
occurred since the peneplain was formed; it is later than the
Mesozoic, and the vast dissection which the peneplain has suffered
since its uplift must belong to the successive cycles of Cenozoic
time.