Evolution (Biology); Glacial epoch; Human beings -- Origin; Human evolution
If the reader will refer to the section of the Pleistocene sands and
gravels of Menchecourt, near Abbeville, given at page 96, he will
perfectly understand the relations of the ancient Thames alluvium to the
modern channel and plain of the river, and their relation, on the other
hand, to the boundary formations of older date, whether Tertiary or
Cretaceous.
So far as they are known, the fossil mollusca and mammalia of the two
districts also agree very closely, the Cyrena fluminalis being common to
both, and being the only extra-European shell, this and all the species
of testacea being Recent. Of this agreement with the living fauna there
is a fine illustration in Essex; for the determination of which we are
indebted to the late Mr. John Brown, F.G.S., who collected at Copford,
in Essex, from a deposit containing bones of the mammoth, a large bear
(probably Ursus spelaeus), a beaver, stag, and aurochs, no less than
sixty-nine species of land and freshwater shells. Forty-eight of these
were terrestrial, and two of them, Helix incarnata and H. ruderata, no
longer inhabit the British Isles, but are still living on the continent,
ruderata in high northern latitudes.*
(* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 8
1852 page 190. Mr. Brown calls them extinct species, which
may mislead some readers, but he merely meant extinct in
England. See also Jeffreys, "Brit. Conch." page 174.)
The Cyrena fluminalis and the Unio littoralis, to which last I shall
presently allude, were not among the number.
I long ago suggested the hypothesis, that in the basin of the Thames
there are indications of a meeting in the Pleistocene period of a
northern and southern fauna. To the northern group may have belonged the
mammoth (Elephas primigenius) and the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, both of
which Pallas found in Siberia, preserved with their flesh in the ice.
With these are occasionally associated the reindeer. In 1855 the skull
of the musk ox (Bubalus moschatus) was also found in the ochreous
gravel of Maidenhead, by the Reverend C. Kingsley and Mr. Lubbock; the
identification of this fossil with the living species being made by
Professor Owen. A second fossil skull of the same arctic animal was
afterwards found by Mr. Lubbock near Bromley, in the valley of a small
tributary of the Thames; and two other skulls, those of a bull and a cow
were dug up near Bath Easton from the gravel of the valley of the Avon
by Mr. Charles Moore. Professor Owen has truly said, that "as this
quadruped has a constitution fitting it at present to inhabit the
high northern regions of America, we can hardly doubt that its former
companions, the warmly-clad mammoth and the two-horned woolly rhinoceros
(R. tichorhinus), were in like manner capable of supporting life in a
cold climate."*
(* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 12
1856 page 124.)
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