stone book

57:8.26It was these seas and their suc­ces­sors that laid down the life rec­ords of Uran­tia, as sub­se­quently dis­cov­ered in well-pre­served stone pages, vol­ume upon vol­ume, as era suc­ceeded era and age grew upon age. These in­land seas of olden times were truly the cra­dle of evo­lu­tion.

58:7.1The vast group of rock sys­tems which con­sti­tuted the outer crust of the world dur­ing the life-dawn or Pro­tero­zoic era does not now ap­pear at many points on the earth’s sur­face. And when it does emerge from be­low all the ac­cu­mu­la­tions of sub­se­quent ages, there will be found only the fos­sil re­mains of veg­etable and early prim­i­tive an­i­mal life. Some of these older wa­ter-de­posited rocks are com­min­gled with sub­se­quent lay­ers, and some­times they yield fos­sil re­mains of some of the ear­lier forms of veg­etable life, while on the top­most lay­ers oc­ca­sion­ally may be found some of the more prim­i­tive forms of the early ma­rine-an­i­mal or­gan­isms. In many places these old­est strat­i­fied rock lay­ers, bear­ing the fos­sils of the early ma­rine life, both an­i­mal and veg­etable, may be found di­rectly on top of the older un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated stone.

58:7.2Fos­sils of this era yield al­gae, coral­like plants, prim­i­tive Pro­to­zoa, and spon­ge­like tran­si­tion or­gan­isms. But the ab­sence of such fos­sils in the early rock lay­ers does not nec­es­sar­ily prove that liv­ing things were not else­where in ex­is­tence at the time of their de­po­si­tion. Life was sparse through­out these early times and only slowly made its way over the face of the earth.

58:7.3The rocks of this olden age are now at the earth’s sur­face, or very near the sur­face, over about one eighth of the pres­ent land area. The av­er­age thick­ness of this tran­si­tion stone, the old­est strat­i­fied rock lay­ers, is about one and one-half miles. At some points these an­cient rock sys­tems are as much as four miles thick, but many of the lay­ers which have been as­cribed to this era be­long to later pe­ri­ods.

58:7.4In North Amer­ica this an­cient and prim­i­tive fos­sil-bear­ing stone layer comes to the sur­face over the east­ern, cen­tral, and north­ern re­gions of Canada. There is also an in­ter­mit­tent east-west ridge of this rock which ex­tends from Penn­syl­va­nia and the an­cient Adiron­dack Moun­tains on west through Michi­gan, Wis­con­sin, and Min­nesota. Other ridges run from New­found­land to Al­abama and from Alaska to Mex­ico.

58:7.5The rocks of this era are ex­posed here and there all over the world, but none are so easy of in­ter­pre­ta­tion as those about Lake Su­pe­rior and in the Grand Canyon of the Col­orado River, where these prim­i­tive fos­sil-bear­ing rocks, ex­ist­ing in sev­eral lay­ers, tes­tify to the up­heavals and sur­face fluc­tu­a­tions of those far­away times.

58:7.6This stone layer, the old­est fos­sil-bear­ing stra­tum in the crust of the earth, has been crum­pled, folded, and grotesquely twisted as a re­sult of the up­heavals of earth­quakes and the early vol­ca­noes. The lava flows of this age brought much iron, cop­per, and lead up near the plan­e­tary sur­face.

58:7.7There are few places on the earth where such ac­tiv­i­ties are more graph­i­cally shown than in the St. Croix val­ley of Wis­con­sin. In this re­gion there oc­curred one hun­dred and twenty-seven suc­ces­sive lava flows on land with suc­ceed­ing wa­ter sub­mer­gence and con­se­quent rock de­po­si­tion. Al­though much of the up­per rock sed­i­men­ta­tion and in­ter­mit­tent lava flow is ab­sent to­day, and though the bot­tom of this sys­tem is buried deep in the earth, nev­er­the­less, about sixty-five or sev­enty of these strat­i­fied rec­ords of past ages are now ex­posed to view.

58:7.8In these early ages when much land was near sea level, there oc­curred many suc­ces­sive sub­mer­gences and emer­gences. The earth’s crust was just en­ter­ing upon its later pe­riod of com­par­a­tive sta­bi­liza­tion. The un­du­la­tions, rises and dips, of the ear­lier con­ti­nen­tal drift con­tributed to the fre­quency of the pe­ri­odic sub­mer­gence of the great land masses.

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.

58:7.10Some of the up­per lay­ers of these tran­si­tion rock de­posits con­tain small amounts of shale or slate of dark col­ors, in­di­cat­ing the pres­ence of or­ganic car­bon and tes­ti­fy­ing to the ex­is­tence of the an­ces­tors of those forms of plant life which over­ran the earth dur­ing the suc­ceed­ing Car­bonif­er­ous or coal age. Much of the cop­per in these rock lay­ers re­sults from wa­ter de­po­si­tion. Some is found in the cracks of the older rocks and is the con­cen­trate of the slug­gish swamp wa­ter of some an­cient shel­tered shore line. The iron mines of North Amer­ica and Eu­rope are lo­cated in de­posits and ex­tru­sions ly­ing partly in the older un­strat­i­fied rocks and partly in these later strat­i­fied rocks of the tran­si­tion pe­ri­ods of life for­ma­tion.

58:7.11This era wit­nesses the spread of life through­out the wa­ters of the world; ma­rine life has be­come well es­tab­lished on Uran­tia. The bot­toms of the shal­low and ex­ten­sive in­land seas are be­ing grad­u­ally over­run by a pro­fuse and lux­u­ri­ant growth of veg­e­ta­tion, while the shore-line wa­ters are swarm­ing with the sim­ple forms of an­i­mal life.

58:7.12All of this story is graph­i­cally told within the fos­sil pages of the vast “stone book” of world rec­ord. And the pages of this gi­gan­tic bio­geo­logic rec­ord un­fail­ingly tell the truth if you but ac­quire skill in their in­ter­pre­ta­tion. Many of these an­cient sea beds are now el­e­vated high upon land, and their de­posits of age upon age tell the story of the life strug­gles of those early days. It is lit­er­ally true, as your poet has said, “The dust we tread upon was once alive.”

58:7.13[Pre­sented by a mem­ber of the Uran­tia Life Car­rier Corps now res­i­dent on the planet.]

59:0.8As this era be­gins, the sea bot­toms, the ex­ten­sive con­ti­nen­tal shelves, and the nu­mer­ous shal­low near-shore basins are cov­ered with pro­lific veg­e­ta­tion. The more sim­ple and prim­i­tive forms of an­i­mal life have al­ready de­vel­oped from pre­ced­ing veg­etable or­gan­isms, and the early an­i­mal or­gan­isms have grad­u­ally made their way along the ex­ten­sive coast lines of the var­i­ous land masses un­til the many in­land seas are teem­ing with prim­i­tive ma­rine life. Since so few of these early or­gan­isms had shells, not many have been pre­served as fos­sils. Nev­er­the­less the stage is set for the open­ing chap­ters of that great “stone book” of the life-rec­ord preser­va­tion which was so me­thod­i­cally laid down dur­ing the suc­ceed­ing ages.