MONOGRAPH 



OF 



BKITISH FOSSIL CETACEA 



OF THE 



'RED CRAG.' 



Genus — Ziphius, Cuvier? 



The more abundant evidences of Cetacea from the ' Red Crag' of Suffolk are teeth 

 and ear-bones, by which, in 1842 and 1843, remains of the order were determined in 

 that formation and locahty.'^ Portions of cranium, chiefly rostral, referable to the Ziphioid 

 family, are rare ; and these are always more or less rolled and worn,^ a condition which, 

 with the break-up of the cranial parts of the skull, and the scattering of its densest bony 

 parts, with detached teeth, indicates the long-continued operation of sea-waves, breakers, 

 and currents, on the deposits of a Tertiary period, which, in England, occupies a very 

 limited area. Nevertheless, there are grounds for estimating the amount of these 

 deposits, which must have been broken up and transported in order to furnish the 

 Cetacean nodules of the 'Red Crag,' at thousands of cubic acres. The remaining 

 debris of older Pliocene with probably Upper Miocene beds, known as ' Red Crag,' 

 occur in patches from Walton-on-Naze, Essex, to Aldborough, Suffolk, extending 

 from five to fifteen miles inland. The thickness of the Red Crag is variable, but 

 does not now average more than 10 feet; its greatest observed thickness is 40 feet, 

 including some sand-beds at the top, which have no shells. Broken-up septarian nodules, 

 and other so-called ' rough stones,' the debris of washed-off ' London Clay,' form in 

 some places a rude flooring to the Red Crag, and the Cetacean with other phosphatic 



1 ' Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles,' 4to, 1823, torn, v, pt. 1, p. 352. 



2 "Reports on British Fossil Mammalia," 'Trans. Brit. Assoc.,' 1842. At this date I was misinformed 

 as to the formation in which the ' physeteroid tooth ' described in that ' Report ' had been discovered. Mr. 

 Charlesworth traced the origin of the then unique fossil to the Red Crag at Felixstow. In the following 

 year (1843) Prof. Henslow submitted for my determination and description a number of 'concretions' 

 from the same formation and locality, which are described in the ' Appendix ' to Prof Henslow's papers 

 " On Concretions in the Red Crag," &c., ' Proceed. Geol. Soc. London,' vol. iv (Dec, 1843), p. 283. 



^ As in the specimen, closely resembling Ziphius longirostris, Cuv., described and figured in my 

 "Description of Mammalian Fossils of the Red Crag," 'Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.,' vol. xii, 1856, p. 228, 

 fig. 24. 



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