Elements of geology, or, The ancient changes of the earth and its inhabitants as illustrated by geological monuments / by Sir Charles Lyell.

  • Lyell, Charles, Sir, 1797-1875.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of geology, or, The ancient changes of the earth and its inhabitants as illustrated by geological monuments / by Sir Charles Lyell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    608/822 (page 586)
    EARLIEST KNOWN VERTEBRATA. [Ch. xxvii proves to be the case,-even in tertiary strata, wherein we onn readily find deposits formed in lakes and estuaries. m°re . ,T1’e on]y incongruity between the geological results and tv which our dredging experiences might have led us to ant* •10SG « priori, consists in the frequency of fossil reptiles nn,i P parative scarcity of mammalia. It would appear that durin^alUhe secondary periods, not even excepting the newest part of the creta ceous, there was a greater development of reptile life than Witnessed in any part of the globe. The 'fZs class over the mammalia may have depended in part on climitll conditions, but it seems also clearly to imply the limited develop meat, if not the total absence, before the Tertiary period of tb placental mammalia, whether terrestrial or aquatic, which when they became dominant, acquired power to check and keep down the class of vertebrate nearly allied to them in structure and com L most directly in competition with them in the strangle for life For notwithstanding the impossibility of assio-ninrr Q • 1 *e‘ limits to the chronological extension of each dass of^erTbrata'a! we trace them farther and farther back into the oast it „ , denied that our fai.nre to detect signs of theX i rTr“ n‘ proportion to the rank of their organisation, favours the doctrine of development, or at least of the successive appearance on the earth of adZ,rrdh“:ifh,8hljr *» £