A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



of extinct land mammals from the nodule bed of the Red Crag to be 

 derived from older deposits. ' There is indeed,' he writes, ' no more 

 evidence for the existence of Mastodon in England during any part of the 

 Crag era than for that of Hipparion or of the Eocene Hyracotherium.^ 

 Against this view maybe urged the occurrence oi Mastodon arvernensis in 

 the Upper Pliocene deposits of the Auvergne and Val d'Arno, and above 

 all in the British Pliocene cave recently discovered near Buxton. 



Other and apparently somewhat less common types of tympanic 

 from the nodule bed of the Red Crag of the county are of a more rounded 

 and shell-like character, and indicate extinct species of those groups of 

 whalebone whales respectively known as humpbacks and finners or 

 rorquals. To a humpbacked whale from the Belgian Crag described by 

 Professor Van Beneden as Megaptera affinis, are apparently referable two 

 tympanies in the Museum of Practical Geology ; the one from the Coral- 

 line Crag of Sudbourn, and the other from the nodule bed of the Red 

 Crag near Ipswich. Another species of the same genus, M. similis, like- 

 wise typically (as is the third) from the Belgian Crag, is represented by a 

 periotic bone in the British Museum from Woodbridge ; while a third 

 and smaller form, M. minuta, is known in England by one ear-bone from 

 the Coralline Crag of Suffolk in the Museum at Ipswich, and a second 

 from the nodule bed of the Red Crag at Foxhall in the Museum of 

 Practical Geology. 



Of the rorquals, whose tympanic bones are of a more elongated form 

 than those of the humpbacks, two Red Crag species, Balcenoptera definita 

 and B. emarginata, were originally described by Owen (as Balcena) on the 

 evidence of tympanies from the nodule bed of the county. Two other 

 species, B. goropi and B. borealina, first described from the Belgian Crag, 

 appear to be represented in the nodule bed of the county by tympanies 

 in the collection of the British and Ipswich Museums. 



But even these last by no means exhaust the list of Suffolk Crag 

 cetaceans, for certain remains from that deposit have been identified with 

 species of two extinct genera of rorquals named by continental writers 

 Cetotherium and Herpetocetus. One of these species, C. brialmonti, appears 

 to be represented by a vertebra from the Red Crag in the British 

 Museum, and a second, C. dubium, by tympanies from the nodule bed in 

 the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons and other collections. 

 Certain vertebrae from the Red Crag of Suffolk may perhaps pertain to 

 the Belgian species known as C. hupschi and C. brevifrons. A tym- 

 panic bone in the Museum of Practical Geology from Felixstow, and 

 a second in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, indicate the 

 occurrence in Suffolk of the species described in Belgium as Herpetocetus 

 scaldiensis. 



With the last-named species we come to the end of the whalebone 

 whales, and pass on to the toothed group, commencing with the forms 

 allied to the modern sperm-whale. Large teeth of the general type of 

 those of the latter are met with commonly enough in the Red Crag 

 nodule bed of the county, but owing to their damaged condition their 



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