'Section of a Portion of Eozoon Canadense'
Dawson, J.W. (1875) Life's dawn on earth : being the history of the oldest known fossil remains, and their relation to geological time and to the development of the animal kingdom
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Never one to shy away from controversy, the paper that Moore was working on at the time of his death was on the then hotly-debated topic of Eozoon.
Now known to be a form of interlayered calcite and serpentine found in Precambrian metamorphosed limestones, it was originally thought to be the remains of a giant fossil protozoan, which would have made it the oldest fossil known and proof of the existence of Precambrian life.
When the debate first began in 1858 Moore was sceptical, believing the Eozoon specimens to be ‘a mineralised or metamorphosed condition of rock-structure’, but he chose to keep an open mind about the subject, conceding that new evidence may prove him wrong.
When Moore entered into the controversy some sixteen years later, he found himself at a disadvantage with only limited specimens to examine. Moore had sections of rock cut to examine under the microscope and also dissolved specimens with the aim of finding organic residues.
Moore presented a paper on Eozoon at the 50th Meeting of the British Association at Swansea in 1880, where he described in detail his examination of an alleged specimen of Eozoon. He concluded the paper by drawing parallels between Eozoon and foraminifera, apparently having been wrongly convinced not only of its organic nature, but that it was a member of the animal kingdom and, therefore, an example of the oldest known fossil.
The debate over the nature of Eozoon was a significant episode in the history of palaeontology but its identification as a pseudofossil was sadly not determined until after Moore’s death.
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