Evolution (Biology); Glacial epoch; Human beings -- Origin; Human evolution
The cold, which had gone on increasing from the time of the Coralline
to that of the Norwich Crag, continued, though not perhaps without some
oscillations of temperature, to become more and more severe after the
accumulation of the Norwich Crag, until it reached its maximum in what
has been called the glacial epoch. The marine fauna of this last period
contains, both in Ireland and Scotland, Recent species of mollusca now
living in Greenland and other seas far north of the areas where we find
their remains in a fossil state.
The refrigeration of climate from the time of the older to that of the
newer Pliocene strata is not now announced for the first time, as it
was inferred from a study of the Crag shells in 1846 by the late Edward
Forbes.*
(* "Memoirs of the Geological Survey" London 1846 page 391.)
The most southern point to which the marine beds of the Norwich Crag
have yet been traced is at Chillesford, near Woodbridge, in Suffolk,
about 80 miles north-east of London, where, as Messrs. Prestwich and
Searles Wood have pointed out,* they exhibit decided marks of having
been deposited in a sea of a much lower temperature than that now
prevailing in the same latitude. (* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society" volume 5 1849 page 345.) Out of twenty-three shells obtained in
that locality from argillaceous strata 20 feet thick, two only, namely,
Nucula Cobboldiae and Tellina obliqua, are extinct, and not a few of the
other species, such as Leda lanceolata, Cardium groenlandicum, Lucina
borealis, Cyprina islandica, Panopaea norvegica, and Mya truncata,
betray a northern, and some of them an arctic character.
These Chillesford beds are supposed to be somewhat more modern than
any of the purely marine strata of the Norwich Crag exhibited by the
sections of the Norfolk cliffs north-west of Cromer, which I am about
to describe. Yet they probably preceded in date the "Forest Bed" and
fluvio-marine deposits of those same cliffs. They are, therefore, of no
small importance in reference to the chronology of the glacial period,
since they afford evidence of an assemblage of fossil shells with a
proportion of between eight and nine in a hundred of extinct species
occurring so far south as latitude 53 degrees north, and indicating so
cold a climate as to imply that the glacial period commenced before the
close of the Pliocene era.
[Illustration: Figure 27. Succession of Strata]
(FIGURE 27. DIAGRAM TO ILLUSTRATE THE GENERAL SUCCESSION
OF THE STRATA IN THE NORFOLK CLIFFS, EXTENDING SEVERAL MILES
NORTH-WEST AND SOUTH-EAST OF CROMER.
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