﻿'THE 



CANADIAISr EECOED 



OF SCIENCE. 



V 



VOL. VII. OCTOBER, 1896. No. 4. 



Note on Cryptozoon and other Ancient Fossils. 



By Sir William Dawson, F.R.S., F.G.S., &c. 



For many years my attention has been directed, in 

 connection with the discussions regarding Eozoon, to the 

 discoveries made from time to time of organic remains 

 older than the Lower Cambrian, and to the study of fossils 

 occurring in the Cambrian, and which might be supposed 

 likely to be survivals from the Pre-cambrian periods. It 

 is now well known that in the Lower Cambrian seas there 

 already existed representatives of all the classes of Marine 

 Invertebrates, and these represented probably by several 

 hundreds of species of many genera, since the published 

 lists of American forms alone contain more than 160 

 species.^ In the beds immediately below the Cambrian, 

 however, though several forms of life have been recognised 

 by Billings, Matthew, Walcott and others, they are com- 

 paratively rare in numbers and sparsely distributed 

 through great thicknesses of unproductive beds; and this 

 in connection with the frequently disturbed and altered 

 condition of the beds themselves, renders any attempt to 



1 Walcott: Memoir on Fauna of Lower Cambrian, 1890. Publications of U.S. 

 Geological Survey. 



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