Paper 58 Paper 60
See Etymology of Coined Terminology.
Introduction
p8: great “stone book” of the life-record preservation: See Hathi Trust Digital Library: The Great Stone Book of Nature (1863) by David Thomas Ansted. See Ch. 14, pg. 242: “No records appear of these in any written book; but they are objects not without ample illustration in that great stone record preserved for our investigation in the rocks, mountains, and plains.”
Section 1: Early Marine Life in the Shallow Seas
The Trilobite Age
There is a direct general correlation between Urantia Book dates and scientific dating based on radiometric technologies for the first 35 million years. Then these dates start a pattern of divergence, culminating in roughly a 1:4 ratio. History of Life by Chris Halvorson, PhD provides a description and explanation for the pattern of divergence that develops.
p1: Ameba are typical survivors of this initial stage of animal life,…: The plural, amebae or amoebae, is required here to agree with the predicate “…are typical survivors…”.
p18: sponges: See UBtheNEWS: Sponges research page.
p19: metric conversions: “They grew in length from 5 to 30 cm and developed into four distinct groups: carnivorous, herbivorous, omnivorous, and “mud eaters.””
Section 2: The First Continental Flood Stage
The Invertebrate-Animal Age
p5: See UBtheNEWS: Kentucky Volcano research page.
metric conversion: “The ashes of this volcano covered 193 km² to a depth of 4.5–6 m.”
p6: metric conversion: “Eastern North America and western Europe were 3–4.5 km under water.”
p11: sponges: See UBtheNEWS: Sponges research page.
p12: Both muscles and mussels are acceptable. STR changed the original to the latter to be consistent with contemporary developments for common usage.
Section 3: The Second Great Flood Stage
The Coral Period — The Brachiopod Age
p1: metric conversion: “The thickness of this ancient rock layer averages about 300 m . . .”
p5: metric conversion: “These animals grew to be 4.6 m long and 30 cm in diameter and became masters of the seas.”
suddenly See also (59:4.13), (59:5.5) From Wikipedia: Stephan Wolfram: “From 1992 to 2002, Stephen Wolfram worked on his controversial book A New Kind of Science, which presents an empirical study of very simple computational systems. Additionally, it argues that for fundamental reasons these types of systems, rather than traditional mathematics, are needed to model and understand complexity in nature. Wolfram’s conclusion is that the universe is digital in its nature, and runs on fundamental laws which can be described as simple programs. He predicts that a realization of this within the scientific communities will have a major and revolutionary influence on physics, chemistry and biology and the majority of the scientific areas in general, which is the reason for the book’s title.”
See “Is There Design in Nature,” Section 7 of Neal Kendall’s Scientific Symposium presentation at Urantia Foundation in 2016.
p6: metric conversion: “This lava flow over the British Isles region today appears as alternate layers of lava and rock 7,600 m thick.”
p9: metric conversions: “. . . the average thickness of this Niagara series being about 183 m. . . . In some regions these rock salt beds are 20 m thick.”
Section 4: The Great Land-Emergence Stage
The Vegetative Land-Life Period
The Age of Fishes
p2: See topical and cross-reference studies: New Age.
Wikipedia: Gilboa Fossil Forest, New York, United States, is cited as home to the Earth’s oldest forest. Located near the Gilboa Dam in Schoharie County, New York, the region is home to tree trunks from the Devonian Period, which occurred roughly 380 million years ago. The fossils, some of the only survivors of their type in the world, are remnants of the Earth’s earliest forests. This location has been of great interest to paleobotanists since the 1920s when New York City began a water project and excavation for a dam. The project turned up large upright tree stumps from a fossil forest, some of which are on display at the Gilboa Dam site and the New York Power Authority Blenheim-Gilboa Visitor’s Center in Schoharie County and at the New York State Museum.
Also see Chris Halvorson’s “History of Life” article in order to appreciate why the apparent discrepancy in time period is resolvable.
Two and half minute YouTube video by leading researcher Dr. Chris Berry on the oldest fossil forest in upstate New York, USA.
p5: metric conversions: “. . . and the resulting limestone layers run from 150 to 1,500 m in thickness.”
p6: metric conversions: “The deposits of these later stages of the first Devonian flood average about 300 m in thickness. . . . Such coral deposits are exposed in the banks of the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky, and are about 30 m thick, embracing more than 200 varieties.”
p8: metric conversion: “In Wales, Germany, and other places in Europe the Devonian rocks are 6,100 m thick.”
p11: metric conversions: “Many of the largest true fish belong to this age, some of the teeth-bearing varieties being 7–9 m long . . .”
p13: See Topical Study: Health and Healing.
metric conversions: “Tree types, 60 cm thick and 12 m high, soon developed . . .”
p16: metric conversion: “. . . which attained a thickness of over 4 km.”
p17: metric conversion: “The earth was overspread by vast forests of ferns 30 m high and by the peculiar trees of those days, silent forests . . .”
Section 5: The Crustal-Shifting Stage
The Fern-Forest Carboniferous Period
The Age of Frogs
p7: metric conversions: “Dragon flies measured 76 cm across. 1,000 species of cockroaches developed, and some grew to be 10 cm long.”
p10: metric conversions: “The deposits of this early Carboniferous age are from 150 to 600 m thick, consisting of sandstone, shale, and limestone.”
p15: metric conversions: “These coal beds over central and eastern United States vary in thickness from 12 to 15 m. . . . In some parts of North America and Europe the coal-bearing strata are 5,500 m in thickness.”
p18: metric conversion: “The deposits of this inundation average about 300 m in thickness.”
p22: metric conversions: “The trunks of the Carboniferous trees were commonly 2 m in diameter and often 38 m high.”
Section 6: The Climatic Transition Stage
The Seed-Plant Period
The Age of Biologic Tribulation.
p0,2,11: See Tribulation(s) cross-reference study.
p4: metric conversions: “The strata of this transition period vary in thickness from 300 to 2,130 m.”
p8: frog A study published out of Hiroshima University in 2021 supports frogs as the ancestor of other vertebrates, stating “What’s more, the research team uncovered that the potential sex-chromosomes involved in the translocations contained orthologs of the sex-determining genes in mammals, birds, and fishes.”
A 2021 TED talk by Michael Levin reviews new research with frogs that is helping to identify and manipulate an electrical communication between cells (not related to the nervous systems) that tells cells how to behave.
p12: mothered See cross-reference study: Gender Studies.
Additional notes:
Matthew Block suggests that the following authors were influential in writing of this Paper and has prepared a parallel chart:
Thomas C. Chamberlin and Rollin D. Salisbury, A College Text-book of Geology (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1909) Wikipedia page: Chamberlin. Wikipedia page: Salisbury. Hathi Trust Digital Library Part I copy. Hathi Trust Digital Library Part II copy.
Charles Schuchert, A Text-book of Geology, Part II: Historical Geology, Second, Revised Edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1924) Wikipedia page. Hathi Trust Digital Library copy.
Thomas C. Chamberlin and Rollin D. Salisbury, College Text-book of Geology, Part II: Historical Geology, Rewritten and Revised by Rollin T. Chamberlin and Paul MacClintock (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1930) Hathi Trust Digital Library copy.
Charles Schuchert and Carl O. Dunbar, A Textbook of Geology, Part II—Historical Geology, Third Edition, Largely Rewritten (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1933) Hathi Trust Digital Library copy.