The fishes of Torre d'Orlando, in the Bay of Naples, near Castelamare, seem also to have perished suddenly. M. Agassiz finds that the countless individuals which occur there in Jurassic limestone, all belong to a single species of the genus Tetragonolepis. An entire shoal seems to have been destroyed at once, at a place where the waters were either contaminated with some noxious impregnation, or overcharged with heat.[1]
In the same manner also, we may imagine deposites from
muddy water, mixed perhaps with noxious gases, to have
formed by their sediments a succession of thick beds of marl
and clay, such as those of the Lias formation; and at the
same time to have destroyed, not only the Testacea and
lower orders of animals inhabiting the bottom, but also the
higher orders of marine creatures within the regions thus
invaded. Evidence of the fact of vast numbers of fishes
and saurians having met with sudden death and immediate
burial, is also afforded by the state of entire preservation in
which the bodies of hundreds of them are often found in the
Lias. It sometimes happens that scarely a single bone, or
scale, has been removed from the place it occupied during
life; this condition could not possibly have been retained,
had the uncovered bodies of these animals been left, even
for a few hours, exposed to putrefaction, and to the attacks
of fishes and other smaller animals at the bottom of the sea.[2]
of the head of the smaller fish supposed to be swallowed, is such as never could have entered the diminutive stomach of the putative glutton; moreover it does not enter within the margin of its jaws.
- ↑ The proximity of this rock to the Vesuvian chain of volcanic eruptions, offers a cause sufficient to have imparted either of these destructive powers to the waters of a limited space in the bay of Naples, at a period preceding those intense volcanic actions which prevailed in this district during the deposition of the Tertiary strata, and which are still going on there.
- ↑ Although it appears from the preservation of these animals, that certain parts of the Lias were deposited rapidly, there are also proofs of the lapse of much time during the deposition of other parts of this formation. See Notes in future Chapters on Coprolites and fossil Loligo.
