82 TALCHEER COAL FIELD. 



further in this, that from these Mangali shales have been procured the 

 only animal remains hitherto obtained in the district (with the exception 

 of some minute estheria or posidonomya ?) And these organic remains 

 have fortunately been in a suflEiciently good state of preservation to admit 

 of their careful examination and description. The most important of 

 these was the cranium of a reptilian animal, which has been described 

 and figured by Professor Owen,* and which he has referred to the 

 remarkable labyrinthodontoid group of Batrachians. 



This group was for a long time referred by geologists to the Triassic 

 epoch, of which it was even considered characteristic. But more recent 

 research, and the advance of more accurate classification,"!- ^^^ shown 

 that the strata from which the labyrinthodont remains in England 

 have been obtained are truly Permian and belong therefore to the great 

 Palaeozoic group of formations. If, therefore, the homologies of this 

 higher group of animals are to carry their full weight of evidence, and 

 to be admitted as against the more imperfect testimony of vegetable 

 remains, the Mangali shales would appear to be referable rather to the 

 Permian epoch than any other. And, a fortiori, the plant-bearing beds 

 of Nagpur and their representatives in the Talcheer and the Damoodah 

 and other Bengal fields must be considered as certainly not more recent 

 than the same epoch (the Permian.) 



The lower sandstones, shales and boulder bed (of the Talcheer gToup 

 No. 3) must of course be of greater age ; and, if the glacial hypo- 

 thesis, before suggested, be adopted, must have been deposited under 

 conditions widely differing from those existing at the time of formation 

 of any of the overlying beds. 



Again, the Mahadewa group, iron banded sandstones, &c., are, as 

 evidently, much more recent ; but the absence of fossils and of any 



* Quarterly Journal Geological Society, London, Vol. 1S54, p. 473; 1855, p. 37. 



t Reports of British Association, 1849, p. 56. Ramsay on Permian Breccias, Quarterly 

 Journal Geological Society, 1855, p. 198. 



