This Is To Be Seen Resting Both Upon The
Archaean And Algonkian From The Porches Of El Tovar.
It is composed of
strata of dull buff, very different from the brilliant reds - almost
crimsons - of the Algonkian, and the bright reds of the strata which later
were to rest above them.
Geological Terms. What an audacious science this geology is! How ruthlessly
it wrests aside the curtain from the mystery of the past, and how glibly it
deals with thousands, millions of years, tying them up into packages, as it
were, and handing them out labeled "eras" and "periods." As usual, the
names made by the wise men are hard to pronounce, and seemingly hard to
understand. But a few minutes will take away the difficulty. They divide
the eras into four, viz.: 1, Proterozoic; 2, Paleozoic; 3, Mesozoic; 4,
Cenozoic. All these "zoics" have to do with life. Proterozoic means before
life, and signifies the rocks that contain no fossils indicative of life;
Paleozoic signifies the most ancient forms of life; Mesozoic signifies
"middle life" or those between the most ancient and the Cenozoic, or recent
forms of life. The periods are lesser divisions of the eras. In the
Proterozoic, there are two periods, viz.: the Archaean and the Algonkian.
The Paleozoic has six periods, viz.: the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian,
Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian. The Mesozoic era has three periods,
the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous, while the Cenozoic era names five
periods, - the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene and Pleistocene.
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