south of France and Italy. After reviewing the other species of Mammalia, he states that " they agree generally, as far as the species have been well determined, with the great Pliocene fauna of Italy, as exhibited along the valleys of the Po and Arno ; but it must, at the same time, be freely admitted that the materials upon which the determination of many of the species of the Red-Crag Mammalia at present rests are so scanty and undecisive that the identification either way, whether as Miocene or Pliocene forms, must be regarded as little more than approximate." He proceeds to say : —
" There are other considerations which corroborate the Pliocene view of the mammalian fauna of the Crag. The debatable species referred by Professor Owen to Miocene origin all belong to genera that are common to the Miocene and Pliocene periods, such as Mastodon, Rhinoceros, Tapirus, Sus, Cervus, and Felis ; but of the more remarkable types which are limited to the Upper Miocene deposits, and which abound in them all over Europe, such as the Dinotherium, Chalicotherium, Aceratherium, Anchitherium, Amphicyon, &c, not a single remain has ever been cited as having been found in the Crag-deposits. The question naturally arises, how does it happen, if the majority of the Red- Crag Mammalia are Miocene, that there has been this selective admixture of species of long-termed 'Miocene ' genera in the Crag, and why the exclusion of the strictly characteristic genera ? "
Professor Huxley, in a paper* on the Cetacean fossils termed Ziphius by Cuvier, read before this Society in 1864, shows the relation of the Suffolk fossils to those of the Antwerp Crag.
Mr. Ray Lankester† , in a communication to the Society in 1865, described some interesting new fossils from the Red Crag, and, in speaking of the sources of the mammalian fossils of the Red Crag, also states, " as an extension or modification of the views which had been formerly advanced, chiefly by Mr. Searles Wood," his conclusion that the mammalian remains of the Red Crag are mostly derived from earlier beds — " the Ziphioid Cetaceans (with Carcharodon &c.) from an equivalent of the Middle Antwerp Crag — the Mastodon, Rhinoceros, Tapir, Sus, Felis, &c. perhaps from a late Miocene, or more probably from an earlier Pliocene bed "‡ .
- Quart, Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xx. p. 388.
† Ibid. vol. xxi. p. 221.
‡ The recent papers of Prof. Owen (Pal. Soc. 1869) and of Mr. Ray Lankester (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Nov. 1870) enable us now to give a more complete and correct list of the Vertebrate remains found in the Red Crag : —
Land.
Castor veterior, Lank.
Cervus dicranoceros, Kaup.
Equus placidens ?, Ow.
Felis paroides, Ow.
Hipparion.
Hyaena antiqua, Lank.
Mastodon arvernensis, Cr. & Jo.
— (tapiroides ?, Cuv.).
Rhinoceros Schleiermacheri, Kaup.
Sus antiquus?, Kaup.
Marine.
Balaenodon affinis, Ow.
— definita, Ow.
— emarginata, Ow.
— gibbosa, Ow.
— physaloides, Ow.
Belemnoziphius compressus, Huxl.
Carcharodon megalodon, Ag.
Choneziphius Packardi, Lank.
— planirostris, Lank.
Delphinus.
