Word: devonians
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Although cartoons necessarily stylize human beings, there's nothing like having a visual image interwoven with bare facts to give a feeling of what a historical period actually meant to those who lived it. Whether it's the primitive swamplands of the Devonian period or the orgies of the Greek cult of Dionysos, god of wine (which started with the tearing apart of a goat, a bull or a baby), Gonick succeeds in fixing facts more in your mind than even the most exhilirating textbook. And Gonick is able to maintain the historical accuracy of his work, making...
...recent expedition to Bear Island, Schweitzer reports in the current issue of the German journal Umschau, he unearthed the first portion of Pseudobornia trunk ever found, a 33-ft. fossilized section composed of bamboo-like segments. It was lodged at the base of a cliff in an Upper Devonian Period stratum some 300 million years old. How it got there is a mystery that Schweitzer hopes to solve on a future expedition, when he will search for Pseudobornia's still-unknown ancestors. "With such a tremendous stature," he says, "it could not have sprung fullblown from the earth...
...Huxley greatly helped change that situation. He had speculated about evolution some years before Origin of Species was published, and in the five years after it exploded on the world (in 1859), Huxley exploded with it by issuing 46 major publications on subjects ranging from the fishes of the Devonian epoch to the New Labyrinthodonts from the Edinburgh coalfield. With a "basilisk artistry" on the lecture platform and "a certain ruthlessness," Huxley loved to bandy texts and split hairs with the theologians. He signed letters in mock church Latin, was "Father-in-Science" to disciples, and called himself the episcopophagous...
Announced last week, Canada's record breaker took eight months to drill, augers down more than 12,000 ft. through a thick cap of Devonian rock. The gas-bearing section is 551 ft. thick, which indicates a reservoir of major proportions and almost an embarrassment of riches for Canada. Before the find, estimated Alberta natural gas reserves stood at 21 trillion cu. ft., which must now be revised upward. The new well alone could supply all the gas the new Trans-Canada pipeline can pump when it goes into operation late this year...
...Canadian subsidiary, tried to tap Great Slave's potential with a test well at Windy Point on the western tip of the huge lake far up in Canada's frozen Northwest Territories. The area was littered with natural oil seeps oozing from a rock strata identified as Devonian limestone. But as so often happens when oil-bearing strata touch the surface, the well proved a dud. Disappointed oilmen all but gave up on the formation's outcropping at Great Slave until last fall, when Phillips and Home Oil geologists decided that Imperial had tried to tap Windy...