Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 35.djvu/621

The British Museum possesses the portion of a left ramus, shown in Pl. XXV. fig. 1. It is No. 33243 of the Palæontological Collection, and was presented by Earl Ducie. The fragment is incrusted with gypseous crystals and matrix of the Marl bed. Unfortunately the teeth are wanting; the jaw, however, in general characters is decidedly phocine, whilst the rather unusual depth of the horizontal ramus and the unusually high angle formed in front by the coronoid furnish important characters.

Canine teeth of large size, and referable to Phocidæ, are common in the Saud bed, and are also somewhat plentiful in the nodule-seams of the Calcareous Sandstone. Two portions, a fang and crown, in Mr. Wright's collection, are from the black-grained variety of the Sand bed. The former shows a maximum girth of fang of about 41/2 inches; and the enamel is rough, like that of the grinders just referred to.

Thus the genus Phoca is represented from the Sand, Marl, and Calcareous Sandstone.

 

Squalodon.

The well-known fragment of a jaw with three teeth in place, discovered by Scilla in Malta about 1670^[1], and now in the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge, is the only instance I know of carnivorous Cetaceans from these beds. The matrix would indicate that it was obtained from one of the nodule seams of the Calcareous Sandstone. Hitherto it has been included in the genus Zeuglodon; but the much smaller dimensions and more triangular and serrated teeth place it with Grateloup's genus Squalodon.

 

Delphinus.

Professor Owen recognized remains of more than one species of Delphinus in Admiral Spratt's collection from the Sand bed^[2]; and fragments of jaws with teeth in situ were recognized by me in collections made by the late Captain Strickland from the Calcareous Sandstone.

Large-sized Cetacean vertebras are not uncommon in nearly all the beds, but especially in the Sand bed, where I also discovered the greater portion of a mandible^[3].

 

Halitherium Schinzi? Kaup.

Remains referable to the genus Halitherium have been already recorded from Maltese Miocene formations, as follows:—

1. A molar from a nodule bed of Calcareous Sandstone, and an "ear-bone" composed of the periotic and tympanic, together with several caudal vertebræ, from the Sand bed^[4].

2. I have also figured and described a similar tooth (possibly a

1. Vana Speculazione, Tab. i.-iii.: Naples, 1670.
2. Proc. Geol. Soc. London, vol. iv. p. 230.
3. Op. cit. p. 134.
4. Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxii. p. 595.