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 containing the words ancient and/or life:
“How natural that the errors of the ancient should be handed down and, mixing with the principles and system which Christ taught, give to us an adulterated Christianity.”
—Olympia Brown (1835–1900)
“Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)