Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-08-20
$50 MILLION YEARS
LOST FROM HISTORY
Yale Professor Unable to Ac-
count for LipaIian
Time.
BY THOMAS R. HENRY.
Lost--l5o, 600, 900 years.

Lost--I50, 900, 900 years.
This vast aeon--known to biologists
as Lipalian time-appears to have drop
ped completely out of history, according
| to Prof Charles Schuchert Of Yale Uni
versity, in a report just issued by the
National Research Council.
Search the world over has failed to
reveal the slightest clue to the Grant
miIlenniums during which were taking
place some of the most Momentous
events in the history of life on earth.
The pages of rock on which the long
story of life was written before man be-
gan to record events seem to have been
torn out and thrown away for this
period.
The record Of time, Prof. Schuchert
explains, runs back in fairly good order
through the period known as Cambrian
time abcNt 500, 000,00 years ago. Then
there was abundant life in the great
oceans Many of the creatures had
hard shells. They disd. sank to the
bottom. and were buried in the mud.
Through the millenniums the seas dis
appeared, the bottom mud became rock
and was raised up into mountains.
Fossils in Rock.
The fossils of the sea creatures were
imbedded in the rock, so that biologists
today know what they looked like and
what families they belonged TO- Some
Of them were relatively enormous crea-
lures, measuring from to 8 inches.
They represent practically all the major
divisions of the animal Kingdom now
found in the seas except those with
backbones such as fishes, mammals and
reptiles.
Seen in q museum exhibit today.
these lords Of creation a half billion
years ago look like very primitive crea-
lures. But they are probably closer to
the highest developed forms Of life to-
day than to the most complex forms
which preceded them and Of which
there Is record. Just behind them lie
the lost millenniums during which ami
NAL life was beginning to take on the
evolutionary processes which resulted in
the mammals Of many millions of years
later
In the next Oldest known rocks, Prof.
Schuchert says, there have been found
traces of some primitive sponges, some
tiny pratozoa like creatures known as
foraminifera, trails of wormlike crea-
lures and of some invertabrate animal
There are also limestone deposits of pc
culiar formation laid down by tiny
plants, the blue-green algae, who are
still busy in American rivers after al
most q billion years. There also are
traces Of bacteria Even some Of these
we're already high in the scale of life,
especially the wormlike creatures known
as annelids.
Skeletons Not Used.
But, Prof. Schuchert says, Not one Of
the known animals had yet learned to
use lime for skeletal structures, either
external or internal, and this when
there must have been present a much
diversified mass of invertebrates. We
know that the pre- Cambrian seas must
have been replete with lime salts in
solution. If any Of the animals had
used lime, they certainly would have
been recovered by this time This abb
sence of skeletons is all the more aston
ishing since it would seem that there
must have been an abundance Of ami
mails feeding on other animals and on
plants"
Now, he points out, it must have
taken a very long time for animals to
have learned to make skeletons-either
shells or bones. Consequently, the cam
brian creatures and the crawling worms
OF the next Oldest rocks cannot have
touched each other in time
SO he says, 'Lipalian time stands for
the uncovered interval during which
the marine animals evolved mostly from
every small floating and swimming form
without exterior skeletons into the much
larger and highly diversified life Of the
Cambrian. How long Lipalian time
lasted can only be guessed at, since
we have no guidance at all from radio
active minerals or from rates of or
ganic evolution There was no more
fundamental evolution during the whole
OF the paleozoic period (the time Of
the beginning of life) than is indicated
bv this interval and we have guessed
it's duration to be Of the order of 3o0,-
600 900 years. To be on the safe side,
in our table we have allowed only half
as much time. and the future alone
can tell how near our guess is 10 the
TRUTH
The evolution Of living creatures,
Prof. Schuchert points out in his re-
port on the possibility Of determining
the age Of the earth from fossils and
from the thickness of rocks laid down
by sedimentation, appears to have gone