VERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY OF 

 CAMBRIDGESHIRE. 



By R. LYDEKKEB. 



FROM the point of view of the student of vertebrate 

 palaeontology Cambridge is an unusually interesting county, 

 since it contains two deposits which are practically unique, 

 although one extends to a certain degree into the adjacent 

 counties. The first of these two deposits is the one at 

 Barrington, yielding mammalian remains of Pleistocene age, 

 remarkable for their perfect state of preservation and for the 

 numbers in which they occur. It is this fine state of preser- 

 vation and numerical abundance of the remains, coupled with 

 the peculiar nature of the rock in which they are buried, 

 which entitles the Barrington deposit to be called unique, for 

 the species of mammals it contains are not different from 

 those found elsewhere. 



The second and more noteworthy fossiliferous deposit is 

 the coprolite band of the Cambridge Greensand, which was so 

 extensively worked for phosphates in the second third of the 

 last century, but is now practically exhausted. From this 

 deposit during the time that the coprolite diggings were in 

 full swing vast quantities of vertebrate remains were secured 

 by various energetic collectors, the greater number of which 

 are preserved in the Cambridge Geological Museum. Unfor- 

 tunately these remains are for the most part very fragmentary 

 and much rolled and water-worn, so that their determination 

 and association is generally a matter of extreme difficulty. 

 But this is by no means the only unfortunate circumstance 

 connected with these remains. In 1869 was published an 



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