PALAEONTOLOGY 



THE claim of Suffolk to a foremost position among English 

 counties of special interest to the student of vertebrate palason- 

 tology is based on the mammalian and other fossils from the 

 Red and Coralline Crags. It is true that remains of many of these 

 Crag species are also met with in the corresponding formations of Essex ; 

 but the majority of them are known only or chiefly from Suffolk. In 

 addition to these Red and Coralline Crag fossils, Suffolk has also yielded 

 remains of vertebrates from the Norwich Crag and the overlying Forest 

 Bed, as well as from superficial strata of still newer age. The great bulk 

 of the vertebrate remains from the Forest Bed and Norwich Crag have 

 however been collected in Norfolk, and since they have been mentioned 

 at some length in the volumes of this work devoted to that county, a 

 brief reference to some of those which occur in Suffolk will suffice in 

 this place. 



Before going further, it may be well to mention that many of the 

 vertebrate fossils from the Red and Coralline Crags, especially those found 

 in the so-called nodule bed, exhibit unmistakable signs of rolling by the 

 action of the sea ; and some of them have been undoubtedly derived 

 from the breaking up of much older beds. These older derived Crag 

 fossils are treated of in a separate section below. As regards the other 

 fossils, some may quite likely have been washed out of strata a little older 

 than even the Coralline Crag, but the majority, at all events, appear to 

 belong to animals which flourished during some portion of the Pliocene 

 epoch — the epoch in which the Crags themselves were deposited. 



From deposits in the county of newer age than the Forest Bed have 

 been obtained remains of a considerable number of the ordinary British 

 Pleistocene mammals. Those of the cave-lion {Felis leo spelcea), the 

 otter [Lutra Intra), and a bear which has been identified with the North 

 American grizzly (Ursus arctus horribilis) have, for instance, been recorded 

 from Ipswich. The skull of a wolf {Cam's lupus) dug up from beneath 

 the Norman tower in Bury St. Edmunds is, or was, in the museum of 

 that town. Among the ungulate or hoofed mammals, the great extinct 

 ox or aurochs [Eos taurus primigenius) has left its remains at Lowestoft, 

 and, according to Mr. Norgate of Bury St. Edmunds, at Maid's Cross, 

 Lakenheath. Numerous bones and teeth of the Celtic shorthorn and 

 pig, as well as red deer antlers, were dug up some years ago in a blackish 

 stratum about a couple of feet below the surface at West Stow Heath, 

 in association with Saxon implements. Antlers of red deer, fallow deer 



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