Ancient Life
Many rivers fed into the sea bringing leaves and driftwood from the land. These served as the base of the food chain. Bacteria and other microscopic scavengers ate the decaying wood. Plankton ate the bacteria. Clams filtered the small plankton. Snails ate the clams and were eaten in turn by crabs and fish. Mosasaurs and cephalopods ate the fish and crabs. Some organisms were swimmers or floaters, but most lived on or in the sandy mud of the sea bottom. This layer of sandy clay, bones, and shells became the Coon Creek Formation.
Read more about this topic: Coon Creek Formation
Famous quotes related to ancient life:
“There was about all the Romans a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. Their virtues were great and noble, and these virtues made them great and noble. They possessed a natural majesty that was not put on and taken off at pleasure, as was that of certain eastern monarchs when they put on or took off their garments of Tyrian dye. It is hoped that this is not wholly lost from the world, although the sense of earthly vanity inculcated by Christianity may have swallowed it up in humility.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)