The holes that remembered a sunken coastline

The Ocean World (1872) describes marine borings in the marble at the site it calls the Temple of Serapis. Its clue is the work of stone-boring molluscs: according to the book, they could excavate these marks only while the marble was immersed in seawater. When described, the marks stood above water. Citing Lyell, the author interpreted them as evidence that the columns had once been submerged and were later raised, a coastline’s history, read from damage on stone.

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