PALÆONTOLOGY
PUBLISHED records of the occurrence of remains of mammals from the superficial deposits of Lancashire appear to be comparatively few, and many which have come under the writer's notice are of interest from an historical rather than from a zoological point of view. Sir Richard Owen,[1] for instance, called attention to the discovery of a large antler of the red deer (Cervus elaphus) in 1727, which was drawn out of Ravensbarrow Hole, adjoining Holker Old Park, entangled in a fisherman's net. A sketch of this specimen was transmitted to the Royal Society of London by Hopkins, and is reproduced in the Philosophical Transactions.[2] Although the terminal branches of the crown are broken off, this antler measures 30 inches in length; the basal circumference being 10 inches, and the length of the brow-line 16¾ inches. The tide flows constantly over the spot where this specimen was found, and the adjacent land is high.
The antlers attached to the skull of another stag of the same species discovered beneath a peat-moss in another part of the county, and figured by C. Leigh in his Natural History of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the Peak of Derbyshire (1700), are equally fine, each measuring 40 inches in length. Red-deer antlers are also recorded from Preston, and they have been likewise found in several other parts of the county.
Other cervine antlers recorded by Leigh as having been obtained from the marl beneath the peat between Martin's Mere and Meols (now North Meols) have been identified with the great extinct Irish deer, or 'Irish Elk' (Cervus giganteus),[3] such remains being stated by Mr. C. E. de Rance[4] to be far from uncommon in the county. From shell-marl underlying the peat near Whittingdon Hall the antler of a reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is said to have been obtained;[5] while remains of the great extinct wild ox, or aurochs (Bos taurus primigenius), are recorded from Preston. During the excavation of Preston Docks a number of mammalian remains were discovered. According to Mr. E. Dickson (Proceedings Liverpool Geol. Assoc, v. 258, 1887) they included 30 pairs of red deer antlers and 50 odd ones, 25 aurochs' skulls, two skulls of the domesticated Celtic shorthorn, one skull of a pilot-whale (Globicephalus melas), and two whale-vertebræ.
The skull of a hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius major), said to have been found in the county under a peat-bog, is figured in Lee's work, the figure being reproduced in plate xxii. fig. 5 of Buckland's Reliquiæ Diluvianæ.[6]
Mammalian remains of late Pleistocene age have been found in some abundance on the Cheshire side of the mouth of the Mersey[7] and a few are recorded from the Lancashire bank. Mr. G. H. Morton,[8] for instance,
- ↑ Brit. Foss. Mamm. and Birds, 473 (1846).
- ↑ Vol. xxxvii. No. 422.
- ↑ Owen, op. cit. 467, and De Rance, 'Superficial Geology of Liverpool' (Mem. Geol. Survey, 1877), 77.
- ↑ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxvi. 668 (1870).
- ↑ Harting, Extinct British Animals, 65.
- ↑ Owen, op. cit. 401.
- ↑ Moore, Trans. N. H. Soc. Lanc, and Cheshire, x. 265 (1858).
- ↑ Geology of Country round Liverpool, ed. 2, 250.
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