THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE IV. VOL. IX. 



No. IX.— SEPTEMBER, 1902. 



OE,IC3-IlNrJ^Xi .^I^TIGLIES. 



i. tnoaontheeium from a pleistocene deposit in the 



Thames Yallet. 



By E. T. Newton, F.E.S., F.G.S. 



THE history of this gigantic rodent began to be written in 1809, 

 when M. Gothelf Fischer described a skull from a sandy deposit 

 on the borders of the Sea of Azof, to which he gave the name of 

 Trogontherium. Since then, at varying intervals, to the present 

 time, new chapters have been added to this history by both 

 Continental and British workers, describing specimens of a more 

 or less fragmentary character which have from time to time been 

 discovered. The English specimens have been chiefly obtained 

 from the ' Cromer Forest Bed,' that rich and remarkable series 

 of beds occupying a position in time between the Crags and the 

 Glacial deposits of East Anglia. The ' Forest Bed ' specimens 

 were first made known by Sir Charles Lyell in 1840, but were 

 more fully described by Sir R. Owen in 1846 and referred to 

 Fischer's Trogontherium Cuvieri. It will not be necessary at this 

 time to refer specifically to each of the additions to our knowledge 

 of this animal or to detail the varying opinions as to affinities and 

 nomenclature, as these particulars will be found in the Memoirs of 

 the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom.^ Although most 

 of the British specimens of Trogontherium Cuvieri have been found 

 in the ' Cromer Forest Bed ' a few examples have been met with in 

 the Norwich and Weybourn Crags. The smaller species, which 

 has been called T. minus,'^ was obtained from the nodule bed below 

 the Red Crag of Felixstowe, and an incisor tooth from the Norwich 

 Crag was referred to the same species. In 1892 ^ the present writer 



1 " The Vertebrata of the Forest Bed Series," 1882, p. 65, and " The Vertebrata 

 of the Pliocene Deposits of Britain," 1891, p. 51. 



2 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xlvi, p. 447. 



3 Trans. Zool. Soc., vol. xiii, pt. 4. 



DECADE IT. VOL. IX. NO. IX. 25 



