Evening star., 1950-02-20
Worm Trails Reported
Over Billion Years Old
Burrows in Quortzite
Found in Michigan
By Thomas r. Henry

Earliest traces of life on earth-bur-
rows OF Worm-like creatures in rock more
than 1900, 100000 years old-have just
been reported by Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology geologist.
They are long, SinuouS trails found in
hard quartzite rock near IShpeming,
Mich. They apparently were made by an
extremely slender, crawling organism
which burrowed between the basic mud
bottom and a thin sand deposit on the
floor of some ancient sea. Some of these
trails are two feet long
DR.. Henry Faul, reporting to the
American archaeological Society," says
these trails could not have been made by
recent organisms or by floating objects
dragged along the ancient sea bottom.
apparently" he says, "the animal
was digging under the surface at a slight
depth. Such behavior is not illogical, for
scavenger might find sufficient food on
an old surface buried under layer of
new sand"
Nearby rock formations show an age
of slightly more than billion years. All
that can be said of the strata in which
these trails were found is that they are
appreciably older
Earliest recognized fossils of living
things date from the start of the Cam
brian geological period, about a half
billion years ago. Yet it long has been
recognized that life could not have
started here. The earliest Cambrian
fossils are of highly complex organisms
most notable among them the trilobites
OF the general crab famly-Which OBJ
viously were the result of long period
of evolution.
But all life preceding the Cambrian
presumably was without any hard parts
which would be preserved There have
been very few evidences of earlier life.
mostly alleged worm trails found in
Canada, Finland and Australia, and
doubts have been thrown on the validity
of these.
A recent Finnish find, it Is claimed,
represents the remains of a plant, but
this also has been questioned Back as far
as the Cambrian period, it usually is
possible to give approximate dates of
fossils Only in exceptional circumstances
is this possible for more remote time.
The northern lights send out radio
pulses.
Such pulse lasts from one to five
mlllionthS of a second, but may recur
with frequency of about ten thou
sandths of a second.
This curious phenomenon has just
been reported by scientists of the Uni
versity of Saskatchewan, Drs. P. A. For
Syth, William Petrie and B. W. Currie.
The university laboratory at Saska-
toon lies we'll within the zone of the
aurora bOrealis and observations have
been made on 20 nights when the north
ern lights occurred in a variety of FORMS
They found that the frequency and
strength of the pulses varied greatly
according to the type of aurora. These
were infrequent and weak when only
faint greenish-White glow appeared in
the heavens and were quite strong with
the so-called flaming aurora" when the
northern sky seems burning with a cold
green fire. 4.--. H.. s- t.....
The observations will be continued
through this winter, DR.. Forsyth reports
to the official journal of the British As
sociation for the Advancement of
Science, in an effort to determine the
possible source of the energy required for
such outbursts in the extremely rarif1ed
atmosphere as much as 200 miles above
the earth's surface. The lights presum-
ably are due to electrified particles
streaming from eruptions on the face of
the sun which are drawn towards the
earth's magnetic poles.
The production of radio pulses may
indicate that the extreme heights of the
atmosphere are very hot, as previously
believed from other considerations.