3/25 Articles appearing in Chicago Daily Tribune
[See Par. R2 above]:
1. FOSSILS MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD GOT FOR FIELD MUSEUM
Wonderful Collection by Prof. Riggs in South America.
Fossils of prehistoric animal life buried 5,000,000 to
15,000,000 years ago in South America, when the southern part
of that continent was a "world apart," and differing from
those found anywhere else in the world, have been collected
for the Field museum by Prof. Elmer S. Riggs on a scale not
heretofore attained by an American research institution, it
was announced today by D. C. Davies, director of the museum.
Prof. Riggs, who is associate curator of paleontology for the
museum, returned today after twenty-eight months in South
American fossil fields as head of a Capt. Marshall Field
expedition. Prof. Riggs followed somewhat the route of
Darwin in his famous scientific expedition of a century ago
on the coast of southern Argentina, and also collected for
five months in and about Tarija, Bolivia, known as the
"valley of the bones of giants." George F. Sternberg and
J. B. Abbott, collectors for the museum, and Harold Riggs,
Prof. Riggs' son, also were with the expedition at various
times.
800 Specimens Collected.
The expedition covered about 5,000 miles and collected
approximately 800 specimens of 100 species.
"The first summer was spent in and around Santa Cruz,
southern Argentina, which at one time must have been a
'world apart,'" said Prof. Riggs.
"Animals living there from 5,000,000 to 15,000,000 years ago
differ from those found anywhere else in the world. They
were slothlike creatures, not used to traveling far, altho
there is evidence that some horselike creatures, fleet of
foot, existed in the region at that time.
"Later in the pleistocene period some of these original
animals had spread northward, while some of the animals from
the north - North America and perhaps Asia, Africa and Europe
- had come down over land connections that existed at that
time. The northern tribe of animals that swept over the
region included the horse, bear, wolf, elephant, cat and
rodent families.
Other Strange Creatures.
"Their bones mingled with those of the great ground sloths
and shellbacked glyptodons, creatures like camels called
macrauchenia which had taperlike snouts; toxodons which
looked something like hippos but had huge tusks, and scores
of others, including a huge, birdlike flesh-eating creature
called the phororachus. The head of the latter was as big
as the head of a horse."
Prof. Riggs collected fossil specimens of all these animals
as well as of the borhyaena, a carnivorous animal the size
of a bear. All thee early animals apparently died off at
about the same periods, as all were found together with their
bones intermingled. This demise is, incidentally, one of the
mysteries of science that have been explained only be
conjecture, Prof. Riggs said.
No Remains of Man.
No human remains were among the bones.
Prof. Riggs used Rio Callegos as the working base for his
collecting in Santa Cruz. "The town is almost at the end
of the mainland, adjacent to the sandstone cliffs, that rise
about 200 feet and hold vast fossil beds. When the tide
comes in about two or three miles, rising about fifty-seven
feet on the cliffs, the water loosens and leaves parts of
the ledges on the beach as it goes out. Then Prof. Riggs
and his men would hunt for fossils on the exposed beach.
Any discoveries had to be dug out of the sand and rushed
back to the mainland in an automobile before the tide turned.
2. DIGGING INTO AMERICA'S PAST
Down in Arizona the archaeologists have found on rocks
pictures of prehistoric animals that seem to have been drawn
from life, and as these dinosaurs or gigantic lizards and
elephants have not lived for 10,000,000 years, the conclusion
in that either man's age has been put back that length of
time or that dinosaurs did survive in some parts of the world
until primitive man arrived - a period of itself a long way
back, according to science.
Of course, these figures will be scorned by fundamentalists,
who cling to the seven-day doctrine of the earth's making;
but at least they will have to admit that dinosaurs belong
to whatever antiquity they - the fundamentalists - are
willing to acknowledge. If they were coincident with Adam
they must have died off at a comparatively early date, for
it is not at all likely that Noah's ark was spacious enough
to contain one of these seventy-five-foot reptiles, much less
a pair of them.
While American scientists are studying these indications of
prehistoric life, plans for restoring an ancient city in
Mexico are being discussed by delegates to the architectural
exposition now open in New York. A city, or well-preserved
remains of it, have been lately uncovered at San Juan
Tectihuacan, Mexico, which long antedates the Christian era
and seems to be the most complete and remarkable record of
an extinct race yet found on the American continent. It is
a relic of the same race whose traces are found in Yucatan
and are scattered over Mexico and are numerous in Arizona
and Colorado. The ruins in places are colossal and show
that an elaborate civilization existed. They had mountains
of art and culture, and this latest city unearthed shows
temples, an open-air theater, sacrificial stones and strange
images. There is a pyramid of the sun more than 200 feet
high and about 621 by 761 feet at the base. As statue of
the sun, crowned by a single block of porphyry and adorned
by heavy breast plates of gold, crown the summit. There was
a pyramid of the moon on the same avenue.
Excavations are proceeding and plans of the city, so far as
it is uncovered are being shown at the exposition. There are
some suggestions of Egyptian art, but whence the people came
that dwelt in these and other ancient dwelling places in this
middle region of our continent has never been learned. Nor
is it known when they vanished. It is the theory that they
were not warlike and were destroyed by hordes of barbarians
from the north. It is a happy thought to restore the buried
city to its original form, so that all the world may see how
the inhabitants of a part of it lived perhaps thousands of
years ago. It is shown at least that ours is a land of
antique monuments not less interesting than those of Egypt.
3. THE EARTH'S AGE.
This is the season when the days are almost at their longest.
In a few months they will begin to shorten, and evening will
come each day a little earlier, until winter arrives again.
But scientists have discovered something that should comfort
us as the days grow shorter. The time is coming, they tell
us, when even the brightest of summer days will be long
enough to satisfy everybody; for we are assured that the days
of 1925 are about one-tenth of a second longer than the days
of 10,000 years ago. Ten thousand years from now we shall
have gained another tenth of a second!
This lengthening of the day which we now measure as exactly
twenty-four hours is believed to be due to the friction of
the tides in shallow bodies of water, which slows up the
earth's daily revolution. In recent years this friction has
been measured in various places, and it has been found
sufficient to produce a slowing-up of one-tenth of a second
in 10,000 years.
Scientists now believe that the age of the earth must be
considerably more than 11,000,000,000 years, which makes a
mere 10,000 seem a very short time indeed. The earth today
is very different from what it was 11,000,000,000 years ago.
For millions of years, at least, it is believed to have
traveled through space, a large gaseous mass, cooling very
slowly until, possibly 1,600,000,000 years ago, its crust
hardened sufficiently for great mountain ridges to be formed.
During the long period of its cooling the earth was in a
condition like that of the sun today, Dr. Arthur Selwyn
Brown tells us. It was a glowing center, surrounded by a
gaseous atmosphere. As its energy became scattered, the mass
cooled and hardened. In the skies today just these things
are happening to the stars. New stars are formed, a great
shining mass comes together, its brilliancy gradually
decreasing after a long period of time, until finally all
heat is lost, and we see a dead world like the moon. This
body continues to travel until it collides with or bumps into
another mass, and the shock again gives it energy so that
another star is born. So, like the trees, the star lives and
dies, and then, after a period of rest, is born again.
From these facts we think that there is no limit to time in
the universe. A planet requires several billion millions of
years to change from its first gaseous condition to a globe,
hardened and cooled sufficiently to bear life, and then to
return to gas and become part of a new planet. [Handwritten
note by M. B. Wyrick referring to this paragraph] We should
worry about the number of reappearances we are allotted, we
will have plenty of time to make it.
3/20/25 See
4905-17.
Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993, 1994, 1995 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation