VIII 



CONTEMPORARIES OF EOZOON 



' I ^HE name Eozoon, or Dawn-animal, raises the 

 question whether we shall ever know any 

 earlier representative of animal life. Here I think it 

 necessary to explain that in suggesting the name 

 Eozoon for the earliest fossil, and Eozoic for the 

 formation in which it is contained, I had no intention 

 to affirm that there may not have been precursors 

 of the Dawn-animal. By the similar term, Eocene, 

 Lyell did not mean to affirm that there may not 

 have been modern types in the preceding geological 

 periods : and so the dawn of animal life may have 

 had its grey or rosy breaking at a time long anterior 

 to that in which Eozoon built its marble reefs. 

 When the fossils of this early auroral time shall be 

 found, it will not be hard to invent appropriate names 

 for them. There are, however, two reasons that give 

 propriety to the name in the present state of our 

 knowledge. One is, that the Laurentian rocks are 

 absolutely the oldest that have yet come under the 



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