azoic

Scientists long ago clung to the "azoic hypothesis" about the deep -- the presumption that nothing could possibly be alive so far from the photosynthetic world.

From Washington Post ● May 16, 2010

The total absence of any trace of fossils has inclined many geologists to attribute the origin of the most ancient strata to an azoic period, or one antecedent to the existence of organic beings.

From The Student's Elements of Geology by Sir Charles Lyell

So here are the three great elemental characters, all together—the primal sea and sky and land—to act the azoic prologue.

From Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador An Address Presented by Lt.-Colonel William Wood, F.R.S.C. before the Second Annual Meeting of the Commission of Conservation at Quebec, January, 1911 by William Charles Henry Wood

The latter formation is found in other sections with precarboniferous limestone and also with crystalline limestone of the azoic age.

From Guatemala, the country of the future by Charles M. Pepper

When they knocked off the mould, these same authorities found that Challoner was right: this bit of concrete wall was as solid as if it had been cut out of smooth azoic rock.

From The Red Mouse by William Hamilton Osborne