The British Study Edition of the Urantia Papers

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.]

PAPER № 59 THE MARINE-LIFE ERA ON URANTIA

Life Carrier

^59:0.1 We reckon the history of Urantia as beginning about one billion years ago and extending through five major eras:

^59:0.2 1. The prelife era extends over the initial 450,000,000 years, from about the time the planet attained its present size to the time of life establishment. Your students have designated this period as the Archeozoic.

^59:0.3 2. The life-dawn era extends over the next 150,000,000 years. This epoch intervenes between the preceding prelife or cataclysmic age and the following period of more highly developed marine life. This era is known to your researchers as the Proterozoic.

^59:0.4 3. The marine-life era covers the next 250,000,000 years and is best known to you as the Paleozoic.

^59:0.5 4. The early land-life era extends over the next 100,000,000 years and is known as the Mesozoic.

^59:0.6 5. The mammalian era occupies the last 50,000,000 years. This recent-times era is known as the Cenozoic.

^59:0.7 ¶ The marine-life era thus covers about 1/4^th of your planetary history. It may be subdivided into 6 long periods, each characterized by certain well-defined developments in both the geologic realms and the biologic domains.

^59:0.8 As 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.

^59:0.9 The continent of North America is wonderfully rich in the fossil-bearing deposits of the entire marine-life era. The very first and oldest layers are separated from the later strata of the preceding period by extensive erosion deposits which clearly segregate these two stages of planetary development.

1. EARLY MARINE LIFE IN THE SHALLOW SEAS THE TRILOBITE AGE

^59:1.1 By the dawn of this period of relative quiet on the earth’s surface, life is confined to the various inland seas and the oceanic shore line; as yet no form of land organism has evolved. Primitive marine animals are well established and are prepared for the next evolutionary development. Amoebae[1] are typical survivors of this initial stage of animal life, having made their appearance toward the close of the preceding transition period.

^59:1.2 ¶ 400,000,000 years ago marine life, both vegetable and animal, is fairly well distributed over the whole world. The world climate grows slightly warmer and becomes more equable. There is a general inundation of the seashores of the various continents, particularly of North and South America. New oceans appear, and the older bodies of water are greatly enlarged.

^59:1.3 Vegetation now for the first time crawls out upon the land and soon makes considerable progress in adaptation to a nonmarine habitat.

^59:1.4 Suddenly and without gradation ancestry the first multicellular animals make their appearance. The trilobites have evolved, and for ages they dominate the seas. From the standpoint of marine life this is the trilobite age.

^59:1.5 In the later portion of this time segment much of North America and Europe emerged from the sea. The crust of the earth was temporarily stabilized; mountains, or rather high elevations of land, rose along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, over the West Indies, and in southern Europe. The entire Caribbean region was highly elevated.

^59:1.6 ¶ 390,000,000 years ago the land was still elevated. Over parts of eastern and western America and western Europe may be found the stone strata laid down during these times, and these are the oldest rocks which contain trilobite fossils. There were many long fingerlike gulfs projecting into the land masses in which were deposited these fossil-bearing rocks.

^59:1.7 Within a few million years the Pacific Ocean began to invade the American continents. The sinking of the land was principally due to crustal adjustment, although the lateral land spread, or continental creep, was also a factor.

^59:1.8 ¶ 380,000,000 years ago Asia was subsiding, and all other continents were experiencing a short-lived emergence. But as this epoch progressed, the newly appearing Atlantic Ocean made extensive inroads on all adjacent coast lines. The northern Atlantic or Arctic seas were then connected with the southern Gulf waters. When this southern sea entered the Appalachian trough, its waves broke upon the east against mountains as high as the Alps, but in general the continents were uninteresting lowlands, utterly devoid of scenic beauty.

^59:1.9 ¶ The sedimentary deposits of these ages are of four sorts:

^59:1.10 1. Conglomerates — matter deposited near the shore lines.

^59:1.11 2. Sandstones — deposits made in shallow water but where the waves were sufficient to prevent mud settling.

^59:1.12 3. Shales — deposits made in the deeper and more quiet water.

^59:1.13 4. Limestone — including the deposits of trilobite shells in deep water.

^59:1.14 ¶ The trilobite fossils of these times present certain basic uniformities coupled with certain well-marked variations. The early animals developing from the three original life implantations were characteristic; those appearing in the Western Hemisphere were slightly different from those of the Eurasian group and from the Australasian or Australian-Antarctic type.

^59:1.15 ¶ 370,000,000 years ago the great and almost total submergence of North and South America occurred, followed by the sinking of Africa and Australia. Only certain parts of North America remained above these shallow Cambrian seas. 5,000,000 years later the seas were retreating before the rising land. And all of these phenomena of land sinking and land rising were undramatic, taking place slowly over millions of years.

^59:1.16 The 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