] 94 Prof.Presticich — Discovery of Iguanodon in Kimmeridge Clay. 



The thin sandy seam, being very conspicuous in the dark clay, 

 can be traced on the side of the cutting (which deepens gradually as 

 it proceeds further into the side of the hill) in a position nearly 

 horizontal but slightly waved, until it is lost under about ten feet of 

 the clay. In the part over the bone seam, where the men are now 

 digging, I found a few perfectly characteristic shells of the Kimmer- 

 idge Clay, such as Exogyra virgula, Cardium striatulum, Thracia 

 depressa, Ammonites biplex, together with Lima pectiniformis, and 

 Serpuloe. A pit a few yards further on showed an additional six feet 

 of clay, overlaid by the ferruginous sands, the equivalent of the 

 Shotover beds, but without any organic remains. 



There can be no doubt, therefore, of the position of this remark- 

 able fossil, which shows that the Iguanodon, or some closely allied 

 Dinosaur, was not confined to the Lower Cretaceous and Wealden 

 beds, but existed during the period of the Kimmeridge Clay. 

 Nothing else besides a few fragments of drifted wood indicates the 

 neighbourhood of dry land, unless the thinning off of this formation 

 to less than 100 feet in this district be due to the approach to an 

 old shore-line, and not to the removal of higher beds by denudation. 

 With the later setting in of the Shotover sands, with their shells 

 ( TJnio, Paludina, Cyrena) and plants (ferns and numerous remains of 

 reeds and grasses), we pass into well-marked land and freshwater 

 conditions, but at Shotover the sands of the Portland series inter- 

 vene between the two. It is probable, however, that the same old 

 land surface, indicated by the latter, was, during the Kimmeridge 

 period, only a short distance further off, and that its gradual rise 

 finally displaced the Portland sea in the Oxford area. We might 

 therefore have had continuity of land conditions and consequently of 

 the land fauna from the Kimmeridge to the Lower Greensand period. 



I may take this opportunity to mention, for the information of any 

 geologists who may be visiting the classical district of Shotover Hill, 

 that the above-named freshwater mollusca, which are so rare in 

 the old pits above Headington at the west end of the hill, occur 

 abundantly at the east end of the hill near Wheatley. About three 

 years since, a pit was opened for the extraction of yellow ochre and 

 iron ore, some 200 or 300 yards west of Wheatley windmill. It 

 was twelve feet deep, and consisted of beds of rubbly iron sandstone, 

 impure limonite, and yellow ochre. At the depth of about seven or 

 eight feet a thin seam of iron sandstone, at the base of the main bed, 

 six to eight inches thick, was literally full of casts and impressions of 

 these shells — chiefly Cyrena and Paludina ; while another thin band 

 was covered with ripple markings and matted with indeterminable 

 plant impressions. Soon afterwards, however, owing to the fall 

 in the value of iron and the other products, the pit was, unfortu- 

 nately for geologists, closed, and has since been filled in ; but there 

 still remains on the opposite side of the lane an old pit in which the 

 same shelly seam may be found, though not so well developed and 

 continuous. The only addition to the fauna of these Shotover Sands 

 made since the publication of Prof. Phillips' " Geology of the Neigh- 



