PALiEONTOLOGY 



Rev, F. Buxton, is believed to have come from the Forest Bed ; while 

 the same origin is attributed to a specimen preserved in the Cambridge 

 Museum which appears to have been dredged from the North Sea. 

 Whether or no either or both of these skulls really came from the 

 Forest Bed, they indisputably serve to indicate the occurrence of the 

 musk ox (which is now restricted to Greenland and Arctic America) 

 in East Anglia at or about the time when that formation was deposited. 

 An imperfect skull of a sheep from Overstrand, now in the collection 

 of the British Museum, indicates a species apparently allied to the 

 living Asiatic mufflon {Ovis orientalis) of Asia Minor. Antlers and 

 other remains of deer are of exceedingly common occurrence in the 

 Forest Bed, but a great number of unnecessary species have been made 

 upon the evidence of these remains, which are for the most part in a 

 very imperfect condition. One very well characterized form is the 

 Forest Bed elk {Alces latifrons). The modern red deer {Cervus elaphus) 

 was also in existence at the epoch in question, as is attested by 

 well-preserved specimens of the antlers from the peaty bed at 

 Kessingland. A fallow deer is also indicated by antlers from the Forest 

 Bed to which the name Cervus savini has been applied ; but it seems 

 very doubtful whether this animal is really separable from C. browniy 

 previously described from the superficial deposits of Clacton in Essex. 

 Upon the evidence of more or less imperfect antlers of different ages a 

 number of nominal species of Forest Bed deer, such as C. verticornis, 

 C. gunni, C. Jitchi, and C. daivkinsi, have been described ; but these are 

 now ascertained to belong to a race of the giant Irish deer, for which 

 the proper name seems to be C. giganteus belgrandi. Antlers of the 

 roebuck have been recorded from the superficial deposits of the Norfolk 

 coast, but there is some degree of doubt as to their being from the 

 Forest Bed. Very remarkable are the two deer from the Forest Bed and 

 the Upper Pliocene deposits of the Continent now known as Anoglochis 

 sedgwicki and A. tetraceros. In both the antlers resemble those of the 

 American deer of the genus Mazama in the absence of a brow-tine and 

 the dichotomous forking of the beam ; those of the species first named 

 being remarkable for their size and complexity, whereas those of the 

 latter are simpler and have but five tines. This by no means exhausts 

 the list of deer which have been named from the Forest Bed, although 

 all the well-defined types have been mentioned. 



Remains of the Pleistocene race of the hippopotamus {Hippopotamus 

 amphibius major) were recorded so long ago as 1833 by Dr. S. Woodward 

 in his Geology of Norfolk, and other specimens have been obtained sub- 

 sequently. Teeth and other remains of the wild boar [Sus scrofa ferus) 

 likewise occur in the same deposits. Teeth of the wild horse {Equus 

 caballus fossilis) are also met with in the Norfolk Forest Bed, as are 

 those of the extinct Continental Pliocene species known as E. stemnis. 

 Although the woolly rhinoceros seems to have been unknown at this 

 epoch in Britain, the genus is represented in the deposits under considera- 

 tion by Falconer's rhinoceros {Rhinoceros etruscus)^ an extinct species first 

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