PALAEONTOLOGY 



ttons for 1 70 1, p. 882) there is a copy in the King's Library, British 

 Museum. The specimens are described, with a woodcut of one of the 

 teeth, in Owen's British Fossil Mammals and Birds, under the name of 

 R. tichorhinus. 



Remains of the woolly rhinoceros are also recorded from the 

 gravels of Aylesford, Canterbury, Chatham, Erith, Folkestone, Maid- 

 stone and Sittingbourne. Teeth of two other species of rhinoceros, 

 R. leptorbinus and R. mercki, have been obtained at Crayford ; in both 

 these species the upper cheek-teeth are of a simpler type than those 

 of the woolly rhinoceros. Teeth and other remains of the wild horse 

 [Equus caballus fossilis) have been met with at Chatham, Crayford, Erith, 

 Maidstone, Sittingbourne, Slade Green and other places in the county. 



Of the mammoth, or hairy elephant [Elephas primigenius), molars, 

 tusks or bones have been found in many localities in the county, among 

 them Aylesford, Borstall near Rochester, Canterbury, Chatham, Crayford, 

 Erith, Folkestone, Green Street, Maidstone, the bed of the Medway, 

 Redborough near Rochester, Shoreham near Sevenoaks, Sittingbourne 

 and Slade's Green near Crayford. Remains of the straight-tusked 

 elephant (E. antiquus) are less common, but have been recorded from 

 Aylesford, Canterbury, Chatham, Maidstone and Slade's Green. 



From the Pleistocene to the Lower Eocene is a long jump, but it 

 is not till we reach the London Clay of the Isle of Sheppey that we 

 meet with any other mammalian remains (at least of any importance) in 

 the county. Very interesting, but unfortunately very imperfect, is part 

 of a mammahan skull, without the crowns of the teeth, which has been 

 made the type of a genus and species by the late Mr. W. Davies under 

 the name of Argil lotherium toliapicum} It is believed to indicate a 

 member of that primitive group of extinct carnivora known as the 

 Creodontia. A vertebra from Sheppey in the British Museum has been 

 assigned to Coryphodon eoccenus, a primitive hoofed mammal typified by 

 teeth dredged off the Essex coast. More interesting is an imperfect 

 skull from the London Clay near Heme Bay, constituting the type 

 specimen of Hyracotherium leporinum, a small hoofed mammal of the 

 approximate size of a fox, which forms one of the earliest stages in the 

 evolutionary line culminating in the modern horse. Part of a lower 

 jaw from Sheppey has been provisionally assigned to the same animal. 

 Both these valuable specimens are in the British Museum. The palatal 

 portion of the skull of another small mammal from Heme Bay, now in 

 the York Museum, has been described as Platychcerops richardsoni. It is 

 the only known specimen of its genus and species, and its affinities are 

 doubtful ; it is also known by the name of Miolophus planiceps. The 

 Kentish specimens of the three species last mentioned are all recorded in 

 part iii. of the British Museum Catalogue of Fossil Mammalia. 



No less than six genera and species of extinct birds have been 

 estabHshed on the evidence of specimens from the London Clay of 

 Sheppey, five of which will be found noticed in the British Museum 



1 See Cat. Post. Mamm. Brit. Mm. i. 41. 

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