Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the fewer familiar fossils they found. Instead they began to find new, unrec-
ognized species intermixed with the mote familial fotms of the home coun-
try. Finally, if a distant enough voyage was undertaken (such as to Africa or
to the Far East), almost
no
co-occurring fossils were apparent. By the time
those practicing the newly developed science of geology teached the west
coast of North America, no European fossil species of any kind could be
found. How could time lines be discovered without similar fossil species?
The discovery of fossils in western North Ametica in the 1860s put the
methods of the European geologists to their most severe test.
Progress in mapping the vast continent of North America, especially
its western portions, was excruciatingly slow. The travel alone was punish-
ing; there were no stores nearby for provisions, no communications, no sup-
port of any kind in the event of accident or sickness. And the expenses of
mapping
geology
in a new and still-poor country were prohibitive. Neverthe-
less, various government authorities saw the need for accurate geological
maps, especially in light of the spectaculat gold and mineral finds that had
recently been made in California and elsewhere.
In 1860, the California state legislature created an Office of State Ge-
ology and authorized the formation of a geological survey for the state. Thus,
while the Civil War raged on the other side of the continent, a small band of
scientists began the immense task of completing "An Accurate and Com-
plete Geological Survey of the State of California," which was intended to
contain "a full and scientific desctiption of its rocks, fossils, soils and miner-
als and of its botanical and zoological productions." Perhaps never has a ge-
ological survey been so widely defined. The new survey began its work with
"greater or less vigor, according to the varying amounts appropriated hy each
successive Legislature." The man put in charge of paleontological study was
a Mr. W. M. Gabb.
The first discovery of Cretaceous-aged rocks in California was made
just east of the Bay Area, in the region of Mount Diablo, in 1861. By de-
scribing these rocks as Cretaceous, Gabb was stating that the thick mud-
stones and sandstone in the Mt. Diablo area were of the same age as the
sepulchral chalks lining the English Channel. There could not be two more
