PALEONTOLOGY 



SO far at least as published records go, Buckinghamshire seems to 

 be exceedingly poor in vertebrate fossils, the only specimens of 

 any real interest being a few teeth of dinosaurian reptiles and 

 certain remains of fishes from the Purbeck and Portland strata of 

 Aylesbury and its neighbourhood. 



From certain Pleistocene deposits at Fenny Stratford the British 

 Museum possesses two imperfect molar teeth and a tusk of the mammoth 

 (Elepbas primige nius] , which were presented by Sir Philip Duncombe in 

 1873.* And the occurrence of these specimens suggests that careful 

 search would bring to light remains of other of the contemporary 

 mammals in the neighbourhood. Teeth of the wild boar (Sus scrofa 

 ferus) have indeed been dredged from the bed of the Ouse at Newport- 

 Pagnell. 



From coprolite-pits in the Cambridge Greensand near Puttenham 

 remains of three species of vertebrates, commonly met with in that 

 formation in Cambridgeshire, have been recorded by Mr. Jukes- 

 Browne. 8 These, according to modern nomenclature, are Ichthyosaurus 

 campylodon, one of the extinct ' fish-lizards ' ; Protosphyrcena ferox, a 

 large fish with spear-like teeth ; and Lamna appendiculata^ a widely- 

 spread species of Cretaceous shark. Ichthyosaurus campylodon is likewise 

 said to have been obtained from the Chalkmarl of Waddon. 



The Lower Greensand coprolite-beds at Rushmoor yield vertebrate 

 fossils, derived chiefly from the Kimeridge Clay, similar to those found 

 at Potton in Bedfordshire, but no list of the species seems to have been 

 published, and no great interest attaches to the occurrence of the 

 remains in question. Lower down in the geological scale the Purbeck 

 beds of Aylesbury have yielded part of the lower dentition of a fossil 

 fish belonging to the group of pycnodont ganoids which Dr. Smith 

 Woodward 3 has made the type of a distinct species, under the name of 

 Athrodon intermedius. This unique specimen is in the British Museum. 

 Other remains in the same collection from the Purbeck of Hartwell and 

 Bishopstone indicate a very different type of ganoid fish belonging to 

 the widely-spread Jurassic genus Pleuropholis ; the name P. serrata* has 

 been proposed for the Buckinghamshire species. 



Of wider interest are the crowns of two teeth of a gigantic 



* See Cat. Fats. Mammalia, Brit. Mus. iv. 188. 2 Quart. Jount. Geol. Sue. xxxi. 266. 



8 See Cat. Post. Fish. Brit. Mm. iii. 216. 4 Ibid. p. 487. 



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