PALiEONTOLOGY 



AS regards vertebrate fossils Northamptonshire occupies a some- 

 what anomalous position ; an enormous series of remains of extinct 

 reptiles and fishes having been obtained from pits worked in 

 ^the Oxford Clay near Peterborough, which are for the most part 

 situated within the borders of the adjacent county of Huntingdon. 

 There are, however, a few pits in the same deposit worked in North- 

 amptonshire, from which have been collected remains of a certain 

 number of the animals in question ; and, if the excavations in the 

 Northamptonshire Oxford Clay were more extensive and collecting 

 were carefully conducted, there is little doubt that many more, if 

 not all, of the species discovered in Huntingdonshire would be found 

 to occur in the adjacent county. Under these circumstances it seems 

 advisable to make brief mention of the commoner and more important 

 types of these remains, with a fuller notice of those which have been 

 actually discovered within the limits of the county under consideration. 

 In this connection it may be well to observe that a fossil reptilian jaw 

 described under the name of Regnosaurus northamptoni might well be 

 presumed to be a product of the county ; but, as a matter of fact, the 

 specimen in question was obtained from the Wealden of Sussex, and 

 named in honour of the Marquis of Northampton. 



In respect to mammals of prehistoric and Pleistocene age, the 

 county does not appear to be rich. From a clay bed in the valley of 

 the Nen, not far from Duston, Mr. S. Sharp ^ has recorded remains of the 

 aurochs or wild ox {Bos taurus primigenius) , red deer {Cervus elaphus), 

 wild horse {Equus caballus fossilis), and wild swine {Sus scrofa) ; and 

 in an underlying bed of sandy gravel molars of the mammoth [Elephas 

 primigenius), the straight-tusked elephant (£. antiquus), the hippopota- 

 mus {H. amphibius), and the woolly rhinoceros {R. antiquitatis) . The 

 Northamptonshire specimens in the British Museum include a humerus 

 and a metatarsus of the aurochs, purchased in 1846 ; teeth and a pha- 

 langeal bone of the horse from Oundle, presented in 1867 ; the afore- 

 said molars of the woolly rhinoceros collected by Mr. Sharp, together 

 with a single upper molar from Wellingborough ; molars of Elephas 

 antiquitatis from Mr. Sharp's collection, two others from Oundle, and 

 two vertebrae from near Peterborough ; while of the mammoth it pos- 

 sesses a molar from Kettering, collected by Mr. Sharp, and another from 

 Northampton, obtained in 1842. It may be added that at Elton, just 



* Quart. Journ. Geo/. Soc, vol. xxvi. p. 376 (1870); see also Etheridge, ibid., vol. 

 xxxviii. Prcc, p. 61 (1882). 



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