Manchester Memoirs, Vol. xlviii. (1904), No. 18. 



XVIII. On the Discovery of Elephas antiqims at 

 Blackpool. 



By Prof. W. BoYD Dawkins, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S. 



Received and Read April 26th, igo4. 



The fossil mammalia are so rarely found in the 

 boulder-clays of Great Britain that the discovery of a 

 tooth of one of the rarer species of extinct elephants at 

 Blackpool, is worthy of record. The tooth was forwarded 

 to me by Mr. W. E. Robinson, of Foulton-le-Fylde, along 

 with the following letter. It was found in 1898 "on the 

 north shore at Blackpool, lOO yards or more from the 

 base of the cliff, and embedded about three-fourths of its 

 depth in the solid clay, which in some places is, or rather 

 was then, denuded of the sand. We (my wife and son 

 were with me) had some difficulty in digging it out with 

 our umbrellas." 



The tooth on comparison with the specimen in the 

 British Museum presents the characteristic narrow shape 

 and coarse plicated enamel, and wide plates of ElepJias 

 antiqmts. It consists of the six posterior unworn plates with 

 a portion of the seventh, together with the talon, of the last 

 left true molar (M. 3). It is a waterworn fragment which 

 had been torn out of the jaw and broken before it was 

 embedded in the clay. This latter point is proved by 

 the presence of the sandy clay in the pulp cavities of the 

 plates. It had probably originally rested in a fluvatile 

 deposit on the land, and afterwards been transported to 

 its resting place in the sandy boulder-clay on the foreshore 

 at Blackpool. 



The sandy boulder-clay forms the bottom of the 



May 2isf, 1^04. 



