Page:VCH Northamptonshire 1.djvu/73

 PALiEONTOLOGY AS regards vertebrate fossils Northamptonshire occupies a some- what anomalous position ; an enormous series of remains of extinct reptiles and fishes having been obtained from pits worked in ^the Oxford Clay near Peterborough, which are for the most part situated within the borders of the adjacent county of Huntingdon. There are, however, a few pits in the same deposit worked in North- amptonshire, from which have been collected remains of a certain number of the animals in question ; and, if the excavations in the Northamptonshire Oxford Clay were more extensive and collecting were carefully conducted, there is little doubt that many more, if not all, of the species discovered in Huntingdonshire would be found to occur in the adjacent county. Under these circumstances it seems advisable to make brief mention of the commoner and more important types of these remains, with a fuller notice of those which have been actually discovered within the limits of the county under consideration. In this connection it may be well to observe that a fossil reptilian jaw described under the name of Regnosaurus northamptoni might well be presumed to be a product of the county ; but, as a matter of fact, the specimen in question was obtained from the Wealden of Sussex, and named in honour of the Marquis of Northampton. In respect to mammals of prehistoric and Pleistocene age, the county does not appear to be rich. From a clay bed in the valley of the Nen, not far from Duston, Mr. S. Sharp ^ has recorded remains of the aurochs or wild ox {Bos taurus primigenius), red deer {Cervus elaphus), wild horse {Equus caballus fossilis), and wild swine {Sus scrofa) ; and in an underlying bed of sandy gravel molars of the mammoth [Elephas primigenius), the straight-tusked elephant (£. antiquus), the hippopota- mus {H. amphibius), and the woolly rhinoceros {R. antiquitatis) . The Northamptonshire specimens in the British Museum include a humerus and a metatarsus of the aurochs, purchased in 1846 ; teeth and a pha- langeal bone of the horse from Oundle, presented in 1867 ; the afore- said molars of the woolly rhinoceros collected by Mr. Sharp, together with a single upper molar from Wellingborough ; molars of Elephas antiquitatis from Mr. Sharp's collection, two others from Oundle, and two vertebrae from near Peterborough ; while of the mammoth it pos- sesses a molar from Kettering, collected by Mr. Sharp, and another from Northampton, obtained in 1842. It may be added that at Elton, just xxxviii. Prcc, p. 61 (1882). 41
 * Quart. Journ. Geo/. Soc, vol. xxvi. p. 376 (1870); see also Etheridge, ibid., vol.