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Page-675. 310,000,000 years ago. "The marine fauna developed to the point where every type of life below the vertebrate scale was represented in the fossils of those rocks which were laid down during these times. But all of these animals were marine organisms. No land animals had yet appeared except a few types of worms which burrowed along the seashores, nor had the land plants yet overspread the continents; there was still too much carbon dioxide in the air to permit the existence of air breathers."
Comment: Air-breathing scorpions (an animal) were present in the Silurian period 100 million years earlier. Fossil evidence for land plants exists in the Ordovician (505-438 million years ago) and fossilized tracheids (which are diagnostic of vascular plants) are found in the early Devonian (408-360 million years ago)
Page 681. "200,000,000 years ago the really active stages of the Carboniferous period began. For twenty million years prior to this time the earlier coal deposits were being laid down, but now the more extensive coal-formation activities were in process. The length of the actual coal-deposition epoch was a little over twenty-five million years.
"180,000,000 years ago brought the close of the Carboniferous period, during which coal had been formed all over the world--in Europe, India, China, North Africa, and the Americas."
Comment: Modern geology places the Carboniferous at from 360,000,000 to 286,000,000 years ago. In the 1950 period some geologists drew the boundaries at 320,000,000 to 260,000,000 years ago. It would be interesting to obtain information on the geological time scale for the 1920 to 1935 period. As with other commentaries on matters of science and cosmology in the Urantia Papers, it is possible that much of the information on paleontology is drawn from one or two text books that were current in that period. If so, they will eventually come to light.
Page 690 "75,000,000 years ago marks the end of continental drift.
Comment: Drift continues. Satellite pictures show that, taking Africa as a fixed point, the Australian plate moves north at 8.4 cm/yr (4000 miles/75 million yrs); the South American plate west at 3.2 cm/yr; the Arabian plate north at 2.6 cm/yr; the Pacific plate north east at 10.6 cm/yr., etc. Plate movement is expected to continue far into the future.10
Reference list
Le Grand, H.E. Drifting Continents and Shifting Theories. (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
Dalziel, I.W.D. Scientific American 272 (1) 38, 1995
Encyclopedia Britannica CDRom editions 1999-2001
Delsemme, A.H. An Argument for the Cometry Origin of the Biosphere. American Scientist 89:432-442, 2001; E.B. 2001
Schurr, T.G. Mitochondrial DNA and the Peopling of the New World. American Scientist 88, (3) 246 (2000)
Shermer, M. I was wrong. Scientific American 285 (4) 25 (2001)
Rothery, D. (1997) Geology (Hodder & Stoughton, London)
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