A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



Mammalian remains, together with trunks of trees, have also been reported from Pleisto- 

 cene sands near Reading by Professor E. B. Poulton. 1 The former have been assigned to four 

 species, namely the mammoth, the wild ox, the fossil race of the horse (Equus caballus fossilii), 

 and a rhinoceros, which is probably the woolly Siberian Rhinoceros antiquitatis. A couple of 

 years later, during the construction of a line of railway from Didcot to Newbury, some sections 

 in gravel between the main Great Western line and the village of Chilton yielded other mam- 

 malian fossils which were identified by Sir J. Prestwich 2 as belonging to the mammoth, horse, 

 woolly rhinoceros, red deer, reindeer, and probably the fossil bison. A gravel-pit on the 

 Tilehurst Road near Reading has likewise afforded mammalian remains, Mr. O. A. Shrubsole 

 recording those of the mammoth, aurochs, horse, red deer and an undetermined species of 

 rhinoceros. To this list Sir J. Prestwich 3 has added the Pleistocene hippopotamus (Hippo- 

 potamus amphibius major), whose former presence in the county has been indicated by a dis- 

 covery at East Challow.* 



Other references to mammalian remains from the Reading neighbourhood will be found 

 in the Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, xi. 204 and xv. 306. The earliest record of 

 such ' finds ' appears to be one by Rofe in the Transactions of the Geological Society for 1834 

 (ser. 2, v. 127), where mention is made of the occurrence of elephants' teeth near Reading. 



Vertebrate fossils from strata older than the Pleistocene appear to be rare in the county 

 and only one peculiar type seems to have been hitherto described. The following forms have 

 been identified, but it is probable that remains of some of the commoner Cretaceous fishes 

 likewise occur in the Berkshire Chalk. 



From the base of the Eocene Reading beds at Tilehurst Road two fish-teeth have been 

 identified by Mr. E. T. Newton as belonging respectively to the common Tertiary sharks 

 known as Lamna macrotus and Odontaspis contortidens. A shark's tooth assigned to some 

 member of the genus Lamna has likewise been obtained from the basement bed of the London 

 Clay in the Great Western railway cutting at Sonning ; while two other teeth, apparently 

 referable to the same genus, have been collected by Mr. L. Treacher in the upper part of the 

 London Clay at Bracknell and Wokingham. 



From the Lower Greensand of Faringdon the British Museum possesses a plesiosaurian 

 vertebra provisionally identified with the species now known as Murtznosaurus latispinus, and 

 likewise teeth of the enamel-scaled fish Lepidotus maximus, both of these being derived from 

 Kimeridgian strata. 



By far the most interesting Berkshire fossil vertebrate is however a small iguanodon-like 

 dinosaur, of which the imperfect skeleton (now in the Oxford Museum) was obtained from 

 the Kimeridge Clay of Cumnor Hurst. This unique specimen was described in 1880 by the 

 late Mr. J. W. Hulke 5 under the name of Iguanodon prestwichi. Seven years it was made the 

 type of a new genus, Cumnoria, by Professor H. G. Seeley, 8 but in the following year it was 

 referred by the present writer 7 to the American genus Camptosaurus. The reptile in question 

 was much smaller than the iguanodons of the Wealden. 



Among specimens collected in the Coralline Oolite at Marcham near Abingdon by Mr. 

 Treacher is an undetermined saurian vertebra ; another specimen of the same nature has also 

 been obtained by that gentleman from the Corallian at Shellingford. 



1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. rxxvi. 303. ' Ibid, xxxviii. 102. 



3 Ibid. xlvi. 588. Geol. Mag. 1898, p. 411. 



Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxxvi. 433. Rep. Brit. Assoc. for 1887, p. 698. 



' Cat Toss. Reft. Brit. Mus. i, p. 196. 



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