Mammalian Fossils found in Norfolk, 3 7 



Art. XIV. On the Fossil Remains of Elephants, and other large 

 Mammalia, found in Norfolk. By Robert Bakewell, Esq. 



During a visit of some weeks in the present autumn (1835) 

 to Cromer and the eastern side of Norfolk, I have examined 

 many of the fossil remains of large Mammalia, particularly 

 those of the elephant, which are found so abundantly in this 

 part of the kingdom that it might be geologically called the 

 Land of Elephants. I believe the number of grinders and 

 bones of the elephant that have been recently discovered on 

 the north-east coast of Norfolk exceeds the aggregate amount 

 of all that have been elsewhere found in Great Britain of 

 which we have any record. 



It is only within a few years that these fossil remains have 

 been generally known. Mr. R. C. Taylor, formerly a resi- 

 dent in Norfolk, published a brief account of the geology of 

 the eastern part of that county, in the Philosophical Magazine, 

 in 1822, accompanied with a print of a mutilated grinder of 

 an elephant, from a drawing by himself: this it may be pre- 

 sumed he would not have given had perfect specimens been 

 as abundant as at present The fishermen who formerly 

 dredged up large bones and teeth from the oyster banks at 

 Hapsborough, threw them away, or broke them to pieces in 

 ignorant sport. 



I propose, in the following observations, to notice the more 

 remarkable fossil remains of the elephant, the hippopotamus, 

 the rhinoceros, and the mastodon, which I examined in dif- 

 ferent collections near Cromer, and at Norwich, and to men- 

 tion the state of preservation in which they occur in the prin- 

 cipal situations where they are found. In a future Number I 

 intend to offer some further remarks on this great deposition 

 of mammalian remains, and to say something respecting the 

 beds of sand and gravel which in Norfolk are provincially 

 called "crag," wherever they occur. Had these beds re- 

 tained the common designation of sand and gravel, they 

 would never have acquired the geological importance they 

 have so absurdly attained. Strangers, who were unacquainted 

 with the meaning of the word " crag " in Norfolk, supposed, 

 when it was introduced into geology, that it was something 

 novel and important, different from the beds of ancient sand 

 and gravel on Hampstead Heath and other parts of the Vale 

 of Thames. From this error I have been relieved by my late 

 visit to that county. The occasional and irregular occurrence 

 of shells is an accidental and not an essential character : but 

 of this more hereafter. 



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