Page:VCH Leicestershire 1.djvu/55

 PALAEONTOLOGY deposits, both at Leicester and Barrow, have been obtained remains referable to the domesticated sheep or goat. Of the red deer (Cervus elaphus) antlers and bones have been discovered in refuse-heaps at Barrow on Soar and other localities in the county, which are probably of Prehistoric age. Other antlers in the Leicester Museum, one of which is from the Abbey Meadow, and a second from North Bridge, were dug up at considerable depths below the surface, apparently in the gravel, and indicate stags of large size. Certain remains from the gravels of the county which were referred to the fallow deer and roebuck 3 appear to have been wrongly identified. On the other hand, a small number of antlers and bones from the Belgrave and other gravels in the county are certainly referable to the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus}. The finest antler of this species obtained up to the date of publication of Mr. Browne's book is one found in excavating the pit for a gasometer in river-gravel near Aylestone in 1888, at a depth of between loft, and n ft. below the surface. Tusks of the wild boar (Sus scrofaferus) have been dug up in deposits of Prehistoric age in several localities in the county, several of these having been bored and used as ornaments by early man. A pair of tusks of the same species was dug up in Friar Lane, Leicester, in 1867, and a smaller pair in Abbey Street, but the formation in which they occurred is not mentioned. From the alluvium at Bede House Meadows were obtained in 1888 certain remains which it is suggested may belong to a breed very similar to the so-called Sus pa/ustris, the domesticated swine of the Prehistoric Swiss lake- dwellers. Passing on to the fossil reptiles of the county, it has to be noted that nearly all these are from the Lower Lias of Barrow on Soar, and belong to the two great marine orders Ichthyopterygia, or Ichthyosauria, and Sauro- pterygia, or Plesiosauria. Some of the Barrow specimens of the former group are, however, of more than ordinary interest on account of showing the outline and impression of the integument of the paddles preserved in the fine Lias mud. The Ichthyopterygia, or ' fish-lizards,' it may be observed, are characterized by the short neck, large head (with a ring of bones in the sclerotic, or 'white' of the eye), paddles composed of a number of polygonal bones arranged in pavement-like fashion, and by the short double-cupped discs formed by the bodies of the vertebrae, which are quite separable from the arches, or portion enclosing the spinal marrow. In the Sauropterygia, on the other hand, the neck is typically long and the head small and without a ring of bones in the eye, while the bones of the paddles are elongated and not articulated to form a pavement-like structure, and the bodies of the vertebrae are more or less elongated, only slightly cupped, and firmly articu- lated with the arches. The members of both groups were marine, and some of them attained a length of as much as 30 ft. They were, in fact, the whales of the Secondary period. Of the Barrow ichthyosaurs, the most abundant species seems to be the typical Ichthyosaurus communis, characterized by its broad, many-rowed paddles ; the Dublin Museum of Science and Art containing no less than thirteen Leicestershire skeletons assigned to this species. One of the earliest known specimens from Barrow is a skull preserved in the museum of the Philosophical Institution at Birmingham, ' Plant, Rep. Lett. Lit, and Phil. Sac. (1874), 37. 21