"Cretaceous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... persisted, with very little change indeed, through a very great range of time, while everything about them has changed largely. There are families of fishes whose type of construction has persisted all the way from the carboniferous rock right up to the cretaceous; and others which have lasted through almost the whole range of the secondary rocks, and from the lias to the older tertiaries. It is something stupendous this—to consider a genus lasting without essential modifications through all this enormous ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... may be divided longitudinally into two regions which differ from each other in their geological structure. Along the coast lies a belt of granite and schist overlaid unconformably by Cretaceous and Tertiary deposits; inland the mountains are formed chiefly of folded Mesozoic beds, together with volcanic rocks of later date. The great longitudinal valley of Chile runs approximately, but only approximately, along ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... these capillary glands become inflamed, a still more viscid or even cretaceous humour is produced upon the surfaces of the membranes, which is the cause or the effect of rheumatism, gout, leprosy, and of hard tumours of the legs, which are generally termed scorbutic; all which will ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... birds, and on the many fossil animals of North America has afforded the best support to the theory of Evolution, which has appeared within the last twenty years. (Mr. Huxley has well pointed out ('Science and Culture,' page 317) that: "In 1875, the discovery of the toothed birds of the cretaceous formation in North America, by Prof. Marsh, completed the series of transitional forms between birds and reptiles, and removed Mr. Darwin's proposition that, 'many animal forms of life have been utterly lost, through ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... has yet overturned the arguments of Hutton and Lyell, that the lowest formations known to us are only those which have escaped being metamorphosed ; if we argued from some considerable districts, we might have supposed that even the Cretaceous system was that in which life first appeared. From the number of distant points, however, in which the Silurian system has been found to be the lowest, and not always metamorphosed, there are some objections to Hutton's and Lyell's view; but we must not forget that the now existing land forms ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... synchronism remains to be fully established by palaeontological proofs. He thinks he has been able to fix upon the true point of division between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic ages, and to prove that coal was deposited through about 7,000 feet of Cretaceous and about 4,500 feet of Cenozoic beds. Mr. Powell's literary style is excellent—not involved, but clear and energetic. He was wise to abandon the idea of publishing an itinerary, which would, as he says, "encumber ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... at all familiar with the cretaceous formation of the south-eastern portion of New Mexico, and who have seen the numerous rivers that flow hundreds of inches of water within a few yards of where they make their first appearance, and the total disappearance ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... see the delicate structure itself, for it appeared to be several feet within the rock. A mass of powdered fish bones and the pungent odour from within were all the outward signs of the inner nest. By standing on a jutting ledge of the soft cretaceous rock, and holding on by another ledge, which appeared not unlikely to come down and crush you, one could peep into the hole and comfort oneself with the thought that one was nearer a kingfisher's nest than is usually vouchsafed ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... Grampians, but the mountains of Scotland all piled together would reach but to the foot hills of our Rockies. The Ontario geologist can only study the rocks in garden plots, while the Nor'wester revels in the age of reptiles in his hundreds of miles of Cretaceous rocks, with the largest coal and iron area on the continent. As with our topography so with history. The career of the Hudson's Bay Company, which is in fact the history of Rupert's Land, began 120 years before the history ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... Atlantic cable. This stickiness was apparently due to the presence of innumerable lumps of a transparent, gelatinous substance, consisting of minute granules without discoverable nucleus or membranous envelope, and interspersed with cretaceous coccoliths. After a description of the structure of this substance and its chemical reactions, he makes a careful proviso against confounding the statement of fact in the description and the interpretation which he proceeds to put upon ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... duration is clear, tho the absolute duration may not be definable. The attempt to affix any precise date to the period at which the chalk sea began or ended its existence is baffled by difficulties of the same kind. But the relative age of the cretaceous epoch may be determined with as great ease and certainty as the long ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Your Paleontological reputation, said he, has made New-York known, even among men not scientific, all over Europe. I hope you will not stop here, but will go on and give us in equally thorough, full, and magnificent style, the character of the Durassic and Cretaceous formations. ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... sand and gravel. This boulder sand forms almost everywhere the highest hills, and besides, in the central part of Jutland, a wide expanse of heath and moorland apparently level, but really sloping gently towards the west. The deposits of the boulder formation rest generally on limestone of the Cretaceous period, which in many places comes near the surface and forms cliffs on the sea-coast. Much of the Danish chalk, including the well-known limestone of Faxe, belongs to the highest or "Danian" subdivision of the Cretaceous period. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... general they have had less time in which to undergo the processes of condensation and refinement, and hence their general grade is lower. In the western United States there are great quantities of subbituminous coal of Cretaceous age, and of Tertiary lignites which have locally been converted by mountain upbuilding into bituminous and semibituminous coals. Jurassic coals are known in many parts of the world outside of North America, and lignites of Tertiary age are ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... antiquity of Man in this part of France. The mere volume of the drift at various heights would alone suffice to demonstrate a vast lapse of time during which such heaps of shingle, derived both from the Eocene and the Cretaceous rocks, were thrown down in a succession of river-channels. We observe thousands of rounded and half-rounded flints, and a vast number of angular ones, with rounded pieces of white Chalk of various sizes, testifying to a prodigious ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... trees, a dreary track to cross at any time, but especially detestable when the dust lies thick upon the white road and the summer sun is blazing overhead. But how delightful is the contrast when, going down at length from these cretaceous uplands, where even the potato plants look as if they had been whitewashed, you see below the verdant valley of the Dronne, that seems to be blessed with eternal spring, the gay flash of the winding stream, the grand rocks that appear to be standing in its bed, and the cool green ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... over the Permian and Triassic epochs, as being more nearly related in their organic forms to the Carboniferous epoch, with which we are already somewhat familiar, while in those next in succession, the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, the later conditions of animal life begin to be already foreshadowed. But though less significant for us in the present stage of our discussion, it must not be supposed that the Permian and Triassic epochs were unimportant in the physical and organic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... towards the alluvial lands, the chalk first makes its appearance in the neighbourhood of Acklam, and farther north at Wharram-le-Street, where picturesque hollows with precipitous sides break up the edge of the cretaceous deposits. Eastwards the high country, scarred here and there with gleaming chalk-pits, and netted with roads of almost equal whiteness, continues to the great headland of Flamborough, where the sea frets and fumes all the summer, ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home |
