Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 59
THE MARINE-LIFE ERA ON Urantia
1. We reckon the history of Urantia as beginning about one billion years ago and extending through five major eras:
1. The prelife era extends over the initial four hundred and fifty million years... Archeozoic.
2. The life‑dawn era extends over the next one hundred and fifty million years...the Proterozoic.
3. The marine‑life era covers the next two hundred and fifty million years...the Paleozoic.
4. The early land‑life era extends over the next one hundred million years...the Mesozoic.
5. The mammalian era occupies the last fifty million years...Cenozoic.
2. By the dawn of this period of relative quiet on the earth's surface, life is confined to the various inland seas and the oceanic shore line ...Amoeba are typical survivors of this initial stage of animal life, having made their appearance toward the close of the preceding transition period.
3. 400,000,000 years ago marine life, both vegetable and. animal, is fairly well distributed over the whole world...Vegetation now for the first time crawls out upon the land and soon makes considerable progress in adaptation to a nonmarine habitat. Suddenly and without gradation ancestry the first multicellular animals make their appearance. The trilobites have evolved, and for ages they dominate the seas. From the standpoint of marine life this is the trilobite age.
4. 370,000,000 years ago the great and almost total submergence of North and South America occurred, followed by the sinking of Africa and Australia. Only certain parts of North America remained above these shallow Cambrian seas. Five million years later the seas were retreating before the rising land. And all of these phenomena of land sinking and land rising were undramatic, taking place slowly over millions of years.
5. The world climate was oceanic, not continental. The southern seas were warmer then than now, and they extended northward over North America up to the polar regions. The Gulf Stream coursed over the central portion of North America, being deflected eastward to bathe and warm the shores of Greenland, making that now ice‑mantled continent a veritable tropic Paradise.
6. The marine life was much alike the world over and. consisted of the seaweeds, one-celled organisms, simple sponges, trilobites, and other crustaceans—shrimps, crabs, and lobsters...But the trilobites were the dominant living creatures...This was the biogeologic picture of Urantia at the end of that long period of the world's history, embracing fifty million years, designated by your geologists as the Cambrian.
7. 350,000,000 years ago saw the beginning of the great flood period of all the continents except central Asia .... 340000,000 years ago there occurred another extensive land sinking except in Asia and Australia ...330,000,000 years ago marks the beginning of a time sector of comparative quiet all over the world, with much land again above water. The only exception to this reign of terrestrial quiet was the eruption of the great North American volcano of eastern Kentucky, one of the greatest single volcanic activities the world has ever known. The ashes of this volcano covered five hundred square miles to a depth of from fifteen to twenty feet.
320,000,000 years ago the third major flood of this period occurred ...310,000,000 years ago the land masses of the world were again well up excepting the southern parts of North America. Mexico emerged, thus creating the Gulf Sea, which has ever since maintained its identity.
8. This was the great age of individual animal organismal evolution ...The marine fauna developed to the point where every type of life below the vertebrate scale was represented ...But all of these animals were marine organisms.
9. Lime‑secreting algae were widespread. There existed thousands of species of the early ancestors of the corals. Sea worms were abundant ...The cephalopods were well developed, and they have survived as the modern pearly nautilus, octopus, cuttlefish, and squid ...The gastropods were present ...and they included single‑shelled drills, periwinkles, and snails. The bivalve gastropods ...embrace the muscles, clams, oysters, and scallops...So ends the evolutionary story of the second great period of marine life, which is known to your geologists as the Ordovician.
10. 300,000,000 years ago another great period of land submergence began ...290,000,000 years ago the sea had largely withdrawn from the continents, and. the bottoms of the surrounding oceans were sinking...The early mountain movements of all the continents were beginning ...It is in the deposits of this age that much of the gas, oil, zinc, and lead are found... Many of the rock salt deposits belong to this period.
11. The trilobites rapidly declined, and the center of the stage was occupied by the larger mollusks, or cephalopods. These animals grew to be fifteen feet long and one foot in diameter and became masters of the seas. This species of animal appeared suddenly and assumed dominance of sea life.
12. The great volcanic activity of this age was in the European sector ...especially in the neighborhood of the British Isles. This lava flow over the British Isles region today appears as alternate layers of lava and rock 25,000 feet thick.
13. 280,000,000 years ago the continents had largely emerged from the second Silurian inundation. The rock deposits of this submergence are known in North America as Niagara Limestone because this is the stratum of rock over which Niagara Falls now flows ...Immediately overlying the Niagara deposit, in many regions may be found a collection of conglomerate, shale, and rock salt…But by the end of this epoch the seas are so excessively salty that little life survives.
14. Toward the close of the final Silurian submergence there is a great increase in the echinoderms—the stone lilies—as is evidenced by the crinoid limestone deposits. The trilobites have nearly disappeared ...coral‑reef formation increases greatly. During this age, in the more favorable locations the primitive water scorpions first evolve. Soon thereafter, and suddenly, the true scorpions—actual air breathers—make their appearance. These developments terminate the third marine‑life period, covering twenty‑five million years and known to your researchers as the Silurian.
15. 270,000,000 years ago the continents were all above water ...260,000,000 years ago...North America was partially overspread by seas having simultaneous connection with the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, and Gulf waters. The deposits of these later stages of the first Devonian flood average about one thousand feet in thickness. The coral reefs characterizing these times indicate that the inland seas were clear and shallow. Such coral deposits are exposed in the banks of the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky, and are about one hundred feet thick.
16. 250,000,000 years ago witnessed the appearance of the fish family, the vertebrates, one of the most important steps in all prehuman evolution ...Many of the largest true fish belong to this age, some of the teeth‑bearing varieties being twenty‑five to thirty feet long; the present‑day sharks are the survivors of these ancient fishes.
17. The earth was being rapidly overrun by the new orders of land vegetation. Heretofore few plants grew on land except about the water's edge. Now, and suddenly, the prolific fern family appeared and quickly spread over the face of the rapidly rising land in all parts of the world. Tree types, two feet thick and forty feet high, soon developed.
18. 240,000,000 years ago the land over parts of both Europe and North and South America began to sink…This inundation was slow in appearing and equally slow in retreating... 230,000,000 years ago the seas were continuing their retreat ...The elevation of the continents proceeded, and the atmosphere was becoming enriched with oxygen. The earth was overspread by vast forests of ferns one hundred feet high ...This period of the world's history lasted almost fifty million years; it has become known to your researchers as the Devonian.
19. 210,000,000 years ago the warm‑water arctic seas covered most of North America and Europe ...When the seas were at their height, a new evolutionary development suddenly occurred. Abruptly, the first of the land animals appeared…From the briny waters of the seas there crawled out upon the land snails, scorpions, and. frogs ...This period could well be known as the age of frogs.
20. Very soon thereafter the insects first appeared and, together with spiders, scorpions, cockroaches, crickets, and locusts, soon overspread the continents of the world. Dragon flies measured thirty inches across. One thousand species of cockroaches developed, and some grew to be four inches long.
21. 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.
22. Coal is the water‑preserved and pressure‑modified remains of the rank vegetation growing in the bogs and on the swamp shores of this faraway age. Coal layers often hold both gas and oil. Peat beds, the remains of past vegetable growth, would be converted into a type of coal if subjected to proper pressure and heat. Anthracite has been subjected to more pressure and. heat than other coal.
23. In North America the layers of coal in the various beds, which indicate the number of times the land fell and rose, very from ten in Illinois, twenty in Pennsylvania, thirty‑five in Alabama, to seventy‑five in Canada. Both fresh‑and salt‑water fossils are found in the coal beds.
24. 180,000,000 years ago brought the close of the Carboniferous period, during which coal had been formed all over the world…At the close of the coal‑formation period North America east of the Mississippi valley rose, and most of this section has ever since remained above the sea. This land‑elevation period marks the beginning of the modern mountains of North America, both in the Appalachian regions and in the west.
25. This was a time of biologic tribulation, the age when life nearly vanished from the face of the earth and from the depths of the oceans. Toward the lose of the long marine‑life era there were more than one hundred thousand species of living things on earth. At the close of this period of transition less than five hundred had survived.
26. The mild marine climate of former times was disappearing, and the harsher continental type of weather was fast developing. 170,000,000 years ago great evolutionary changes and adjustments were taking place over the entire face of the earth. Land was rising all over the world as the ocean beds were sinking ...Two new climatic factors appeared—glaciation and aridity. Many of the earth's higher regions had become arid and barren.
27. Throughout these times of climatic change, great variations also occurred in the land plants. The seed plants first appeared, and they afforded a better food supply for the subsequently increased land‑animal life. The insects underwent a radical change. The resting stages evolved to meet the demands of suspended animation during winter and drought.
28. During this declining frog age, in Africa, the first step in the evolution of the frog into the reptile occurred. And since the land masses were still connected, this prereptilian creature, an air breather, spread over all the world. By this time the atmosphere had. been so changed that it served admirably to support animal respiration.
29. 160,000,000 years ago the land was largely covered with vegetation adapted to support land‑animal life, and the atmosphere had become ideal for animal respiration. Thus ends the period of marine‑life curtailment and those testing times of biologic adversity which eliminated all forms of life except such as had. survival value, and which were therefore entitled to function as the ancestors of the more rapidly developing and highly differentiated. life of the ensuing ages of planetary evolution.
30. The ending of this period of biologic tribulation, known to your students as the Permian, also marks the end of the long Paleozoic era ...The vast oceanic nursery of life on Urantia has served its purpose. During the long ages when the land was unsuited to support life, before the atmosphere contained sufficient oxygen to sustain the higher land animals, the sea mothered and nurtured the early life of the realm. Now the biologic importance of the sea progressively diminishes as the second stage of evolution begins to unfold on the land.
Discussion Questions
1. How does history help us evaluate destiny?
2. Why is it important that plant life established the base for animal life?
3. Why do you think life first developed in a marine environment?
4. What evidence do we have that sandstone was changed to quartz and limestone changed to marble?
5. Is there evidence that Greenland was once a tropical paradise?
6. What is the scientific significance of the repeated rise and fall of continental land masses?
7. How do you think the Life Carriers keep such detailed records of geologic and other changes of planets?
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The Urantia Book Fellowship