Siluria: The History of the Oldest Known Rocks Containing Organic Remains, with a Brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold over the Earth

The Scottish geologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792–1871) first proposed the Silurian period after studying ancient rocks in Wales in the 1830s. Naming the sequence after the Silures, a Celtic tribe, he believed that the fossils representing the origins of life could be attributed to this period. This assertion sparked a heated dispute with his contemporary Adam Sedgwick, ultimately ruining their friendship. First published in 1854, Siluria is a significant reworking of Murchison's ea...