sandstone

59:1.112. Sand­stones—de­posits made in shal­low wa­ter but where the waves were suf­fi­cient to pre­vent mud set­tling.

59:4.7Fol­low­ing these sub­mer­gences, many of the shore lines were con­sid­er­ably el­e­vated so that the ear­lier de­posits were cov­ered by mud or shale. There is also a red sand­stone stra­tum which char­ac­ter­izes one of the De­vo­nian sed­i­men­ta­tions, and this red layer ex­tends over much of the earth’s sur­face, be­ing found in North and South Amer­ica, Eu­rope, Rus­sia, China, Africa, and Aus­tralia. Such red de­posits are sug­ges­tive of arid or semi­arid con­di­tions, but the cli­mate of this epoch was still mild and even.

59:5.10The de­posits of this early Car­bonif­er­ous age are from 500 to 2,000 feet thick, con­sist­ing of sand­stone, shale, and lime­stone. The old­est strata yield the fos­sils of both land and ma­rine an­i­mals and plants, along with much gravel and basin sed­i­ments. Lit­tle work­able coal is found in these older strata. These de­po­si­tions through­out Eu­rope are very sim­i­lar to those laid down over North Amer­ica.

60:1.1The ero­sion de­posits of this pe­riod were mostly con­glom­er­ates, shale, and sand­stone. The gyp­sum and red lay­ers through­out these sed­i­men­ta­tions over both Amer­ica and Eu­rope in­di­cate that the cli­mate of these con­ti­nents was arid. These arid dis­tricts were sub­jected to great ero­sion from the vi­o­lent and pe­ri­odic cloud­bursts on the sur­round­ing high­lands.

60:3.9The de­posits of chalk and green­sand marl give name to this pe­riod. The sed­i­men­ta­tions of these times are var­ie­gated, con­sist­ing of chalk, shale, sand­stone, and small amounts of lime­stone, to­gether with in­fe­rior coal or lig­nite, and in many re­gions they con­tain oil. These lay­ers vary in thick­ness from 200 feet in some places to 10,000 feet in west­ern North Amer­ica and nu­mer­ous Eu­ro­pean lo­cal­i­ties. Along the east­ern bor­ders of the Rocky Moun­tains these de­posits may be ob­served in the up­tilted foothills.

60:1.2Few fos­sils are to be found in these lay­ers, but nu­mer­ous sand­stone foot­prints of the land rep­tiles may be ob­served. In many re­gions the one thou­sand feet of red sand­stone de­posit of this pe­riod con­tains no fos­sils. The life of land an­i­mals was con­tin­u­ous only in cer­tain parts of Africa.

60:1.3These de­posits vary in thick­ness from 3,000 to 10,000 feet, even be­ing 18,000 on the Pa­cific coast. Lava was later forced in be­tween many of these lay­ers. The Pal­isades of the Hud­son River were formed by the ex­tru­sion of basalt lava be­tween these Tri­as­sic strata. Vol­canic ac­tion was ex­ten­sive in dif­fer­ent parts of the world.

60:1.4Over Eu­rope, es­pe­cially Ger­many and Rus­sia, may be found de­posits of this pe­riod. In Eng­land the New Red Sand­stone be­longs to this epoch. Lime­stone was laid down in the south­ern Alps as the re­sult of a sea in­va­sion and may now be seen as the pe­cu­liar dolomite lime­stone walls, peaks, and pil­lars of those re­gions. This layer is to be found all over Africa and Aus­tralia. The Car­rara mar­ble comes from such mod­i­fied lime­stone. Noth­ing of this pe­riod will be found in the south­ern re­gions of South Amer­ica as that part of the con­ti­nent re­mained down and hence pre­sents only a wa­ter or ma­rine de­posit con­tin­u­ous with the pre­ced­ing and suc­ceed­ing epochs.

58:7.9Dur­ing these times of prim­i­tive ma­rine life, ex­ten­sive ar­eas of the con­ti­nen­tal shores sank be­neath the seas from a few feet to half a mile. Much of the older sand­stone and con­glom­er­ates rep­re­sents the sed­i­men­tary ac­cu­mu­la­tions of these an­cient shores. The sed­i­men­tary rocks be­long­ing to this early strat­i­fi­ca­tion rest di­rectly upon those lay­ers which date back far be­yond the ori­gin of life, back to the early ap­pear­ance of the world-wide ocean.

59:1.16The trilo­bite fos­sil-bear­ing strata of this epoch out­crop here and there through­out all the con­ti­nents ex­cept in cen­tral Asia. In many re­gions these rocks are hor­i­zon­tal, but in the moun­tains they are tilted and dis­torted be­cause of pres­sure and fold­ing. And such pres­sure has, in many places, changed the orig­i­nal char­ac­ter of these de­posits. Sand­stone has been turned into quartz, shale has been changed to slate, while lime­stone has been con­verted into mar­ble.