Dictionary.net

The name given by Dr. Dawson of Montreal to a supposed gigantic fossil foraminifer, found in the Laurentian rocks of Canada and in the quartz rocks of Germany. It is the oldest form of life traceable in the past history of the globe. See extract. "The writer (Mr. T. Mallard Reade) asserts that structures called eozoonal have not yet been discovered in any unaltered rocks, while they are abundant in metamorphosed rocks; and argues, from this and other reasons, that Professors King and Rowney are right in holding the eozoon to be a mere mineral structure occasioned by the metamorphism of the rock ... Dr. Carpenter replies ... that the eozoonal structure is most characteristically displayed in those portions of the serpentine limestone of the Laurentian formation which have undergone the least metamorphic change, reiterating the arguments derived from the structure itself, which have led him and most other geologists to consider the eozoon as of indubitable organic origin."-The Academy.