Man and the Glacial PeriodWright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
History
Man and the Glacial Period
Wright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
Glacial epoch; Prehistoric peoples
"The fossils preserved in these deposits, apart from the physical
indications, exhibit the climatal changes which accompanied their
deposition. The Coralline Crag contains a fauna consisting mainly
of species which now range to the Mediterranean, many of them being
restricted to the warm southern waters. Associated with these are a few
boreal forms, but they are represented in general by few individuals.
Here and there in the deposits of this age far-travelled stones are to
be found, but they are always accounted great rarities.
"The Red Crag consists of an irregular assemblage of beaches and
sand-banks of widely different ages, but their sequence can be made out
with ease by a study of the fauna. In the oldest deposits, Mediterranean
species are very numerous, while the boreal forms are comparatively rare;
but in successive later deposits the proportions are very gradually
reversed, and from the overlying Chillesford series the Mediterranean
species are practically absent. The physical indications run _pari
passu_ with the paleontological, and in the newer beds of the Red Crag
far-travelled stones are common.
"In the Forest Bed series there is a marine band--the _Leda myalis_
bed--which contains an almost arctic assemblage of shells; while at about
the same horizon plant remains have been found, including such high
northern species as _Salix polaris_ and _Betula nana_.
"The glacial deposits do not, in my opinion, contain anywhere in England
or Wales a genuine intrinsic fauna, such shells as occur in the East
Anglian glacial deposits having been derived in part from a contemporary
sea-bed, and, for the rest, from the older formations, down perhaps to
the Coralline Crag. In the post-glacial deposits we have hardly any trace
of a survival of the boreal forms, and I consider that the whole marine
fauna of the North Sea was entirely obliterated at the culmination of the
Glacial epoch, and that the repeopling in post-glacial times proceeded
mainly from the English Channel, into which the northern forms never
penetrated.
"_The Great Glacial Centres._
"Where such complex interactions have to be described as were produced
by the conflicting glaciers of the British Isles it is difficult to
deal consecutively with the phenomena of any one area, but with short
digressions in explanation of special points it may be possible to
accomplish a clear presentation of the facts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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