310 



FOSSILS OF THE OOLITE. 



[Ch. XX. 



from the great oolite of Enstone, near Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, wa& 

 cited, on the authority of Cuvier, as referable to this class. Dr. Backland, 

 who stated this in his Bridge water Treatise (vol. i. p. 115), had the 

 kindness to send me the supposed ulna of a whale, that Professor Owen 

 might examine into its claims to be considered as cetacean. It is the 



Fisr. 374. 



Bone of a reptile, formerly supposed to 1)0 the ulna of a Cetacean ; from the Great Oolite of 

 Enstone, near Woodstock. 



opinion of thi«t eminent comparative anatomist that it cannot have 

 belonged to the cetacea, because the fore-arm in these marine mammalia 

 is invariably much flatter, and devoid of all muscular depressions and 

 ridges, one of which is so prominent in the middle of this bone, rep- 

 resented in the above cut (fig. 374). In saurians, on the contrary, such 

 ridges exist for the attachment of muscles ; and to some animal of that 

 class the bone is probably referable. 



These observations are made to prepare the reader to appreciate more 

 justly the interest felt by every geologist in the discovery in the Stones- 

 field slate of no less than seven specimens of lov/er jaws of mammiferous 

 quadrupeds, belonging to three different species and to two distinct 

 genera, for which the names of Amphitherium and Phascolotherium 

 have been adopted. When Cuvier was first shown one of these fossils 

 in 1818, he pronounced it to belong to a small ferine mammal, with a 

 jaw much resembling that of an opossum, but differing from all known 

 ferine genera, in the great number of the molar teeth, of which it had 

 at least ten in a row. Since that period, a much more perfect specimen 

 of the same fossil, obtained by Dr. Buckland (see ^\g. 375), has beeu 



<^ 



AmphWierium P/'evostii, Cuv. Sp. Stonesfiekl slate. 



O. Coronoid process. 



b, Condyk 



c. Angle of jaw. 



d. Double-fanged molars 



