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turtles

5 paragraphs · about 2 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under turtles, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

60:2.13Tur­tles in­creased dur­ing this pe­riod, first ap­pear­ing in North Amer­ica. Their an­ces­tors came over from Asia by way of the north­ern land bridge.

60:3.1470,000,000 years ago the crustal dis­tor­tions con­nected with the max­i­mum el­e­va­tion of the Rocky Moun­tain re­gion took place. A large seg­ment of rock was over­thrust fif­teen miles at the sur­face in British Columbia; here the Cam­brian rocks are obliquely thrust out over the Cre­ta­ceous lay­ers. On the east­ern slope of the Rocky Moun­tains, near the Cana­dian bor­der, there was an­other spec­tac­u­lar over­thrust; here may be found the pre­life stone lay­ers shoved out over the then re­cent Cre­ta­ceous de­posits.

60:3.15–19 · five paragraphs not cited here ·

60:3.15This was an age of vol­canic ac­tiv­ity all over the world, giv­ing rise to nu­mer­ous small iso­lated vol­canic cones. Sub­ma­rine vol­ca­noes broke out in the sub­merged Hi­malayan re­gion. Much of the rest of Asia, in­clud­ing Siberia, was also still un­der wa­ter.

60:3.1665,000,000 years ago there oc­curred one of the great­est lava flows of all time. The de­po­si­tion lay­ers of these and pre­ced­ing lava flows are to be found all over the Amer­i­cas, North and South Africa, Aus­tralia, and parts of Eu­rope.

60:3.17The land an­i­mals were lit­tle changed, but be­cause of greater con­ti­nen­tal emer­gence, es­pe­cially in North Amer­ica, they rapidly mul­ti­plied. North Amer­ica was the great field of the land-an­i­mal evo­lu­tion of these times, most of Eu­rope be­ing un­der wa­ter.

60:3.18The cli­mate was still warm and uni­form. The arc­tic re­gions were en­joy­ing weather much like that of the pres­ent cli­mate in cen­tral and south­ern North Amer­ica.

60:3.19Great plant-life evo­lu­tion was tak­ing place. Among the land plants the angio­sperms pre­dom­i­nated, and many pres­ent-day trees first ap­peared, in­clud­ing beech, birch, oak, wal­nut, sycamore, maple, and mod­ern palms. Fruits, grasses, and ce­re­als were abun­dant, and these seed-bear­ing grasses and trees were to the plant world what the an­ces­tors of man were to the an­i­mal world—they were sec­ond in evo­lu­tion­ary im­por­tance only to the ap­pear­ance of man him­self. Sud­denly and with­out pre­vi­ous gra­da­tion, the great fam­ily of flow­er­ing plants mu­tated. And this new flora soon over­spread the en­tire world.

60:3.2060,000,000 years ago, though the land rep­tiles were on the de­cline, the di­no­saurs con­tin­ued as monar­chs of the land, the lead now be­ing taken by the more ag­ile and ac­tive types of the smaller leap­ing kan­ga­roo va­ri­eties of the car­niv­o­rous di­no­saurs. But some­time pre­vi­ously there had ap­peared new types of the her­biv­o­rous di­no­saurs, whose rapid in­crease was due to the ap­pear­ance of the grass fam­ily of land plants. One of these new grass-eat­ing di­no­saurs was a true quadruped hav­ing two horns and a cape­like shoul­der flange. The land type of tur­tle, twenty feet across, ap­peared as did also the mod­ern croc­o­dile and true snakes of the mod­ern type. Great changes were also oc­cur­ring among the fishes and other forms of ma­rine life.

61:2.6Along with the dis­ap­pear­ance of the di­no­saurs, other and great changes oc­curred in the var­i­ous branches of the saurian fam­ily. The sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the early rep­til­ian fam­i­lies are tur­tles, snakes, and croc­o­diles, to­gether with the ven­er­a­ble frog, the only re­main­ing group rep­re­sen­ta­tive of man’s ear­lier an­ces­tors.

65:2.10The king­dom of rep­tiles, de­scended from the frog fam­ily, is to­day rep­re­sented by four sur­viv­ing di­vi­sions: two non­pro­gres­sive, snakes and lizards, to­gether with their cousins, al­li­ga­tors and tur­tles; one par­tially pro­gres­sive, the bird fam­ily, and the fourth, the an­ces­tors of mam­mals and the di­rect line of de­scent of the hu­man species. But though long de­parted, the mas­sive­ness of the pass­ing Rep­tilia found echo in the ele­phant and mastodon, while their pe­cu­liar forms were per­pet­u­ated in the leap­ing kan­ga­roos.

Onward

Cited alongside: dinosaurs, snakes, crocodiles, reptilians