A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE
records the discovery of the skull of a brown bear (Ursus arctus) in 1876, at Bootle, during the excavation of the Alexandra Dock; and likewise states that a skull and other bones of the same species have been found in the Bewsey Valley, near Warrington. With regard to the Bootle specimen, it has been suggested from its battered appearance, that it may have remained for some time on the surface of the ground before being embedded in the clay, or may have been washed out of an earlier deposit and re-buried. A few antlers and bones of the red deer, together with bones of the horse and undetermined cetaceans, are likewise recorded by Mr. Morton from Bootle; and the same writer states that a horn-core of the aurochs has been obtained from this neighbourhood. The latter specimen was exhibited to the Zoological Society by Mr. J. G. Millais in April, 1905. Recently Prof. W. B. Dawkins (Mem. Manchester Lit. Soc. 1904) has described remains of the straight-tusked elephant (Elephas antiquus) from Blackpool.
From Prehistoric and Pleistocene deposits to the Keuper, or upper division of the Trias, is a long leap, but intermediate formations are lacking in the county. As regards the Keuper and the other divisions of the Trias, vertebrate fossils are represented solely by footprints of the primeval salamander known as Chirosaurus (otherwise Chirotherium) and perhaps also of the reptile Rhynchosaurus of the Trias of Shropshire. The great majority of these footprints are met with in one particular horizon at Storeton and other localities in the Wirral peninsula on the Cheshire side of the river, but, according to Mr. Morton,[1] specimens of both types were discovered many years ago by Mr. A. Higginson in a quarry, long since buried, where now stands Rathbone Street, at the corner of Washington Street, in the city of Liverpool itself. A report on these tracks has been recently drawn up by Mr. H. C. Beasley,[2] who has also figured[3] the type specimen of C. herculis from Cheshire.
The next and only other formation from which vertebrate fossils appear to have been recorded within the limits of the county is the Carboniferous, which has yielded evidence of two kinds of labyrinthodont amphibians, and also a considerable number of fish-remains from all the three divisions of the Coal Measures. Information with regard to these fish-remains from the neighbourhood of Prescot and St. Helens will be found in Mr. Morton's book[4] and likewise in Dr. A. Smith Woodward's invaluable Catalogue of Fossil Fishes in the British Museum. Of the Carboniferous fishes of the Littleborough district Mr. E. D. Wellburn[5] has drawn up a careful list. All the specimens from the latter district, it may be mentioned, are from the Lower Coal Measures. Finally, Mr. H. Bolton,[6] in 1875, published a synopsis of all the known fish-remains from the county, which embraced thirty-seven species, arranged in twenty-three genera, to which he added another in the following year. Since the present article was in type Mr. Bolton has published (Trans. Manchester Geol. Soc. vol. xxviii. pts. 19 and 20) a new and revised list of the Carboniferous fish-fauna of the county.
The most interesting Lancashire vertebrate fossil is undoubtedly Hylonomus wildi, a representative of that group of small labyrinthodont or
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