Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/67

 PALAEONTOLOGY THE claim of Suffolk to a foremost position among English counties of special interest to the student of vertebrate palason- tology is based on the mammalian and other fossils from the Red and Coralline Crags. It is true that remains of many of these Crag species are also met with in the corresponding formations of Essex ; but the majority of them are known only or chiefly from Suffolk. In addition to these Red and Coralline Crag fossils, Suffolk has also yielded remains of vertebrates from the Norwich Crag and the overlying Forest Bed, as well as from superficial strata of still newer age. The great bulk of the vertebrate remains from the Forest Bed and Norwich Crag have however been collected in Norfolk, and since they have been mentioned at some length in the volumes of this work devoted to that county, a brief reference to some of those which occur in Suffolk will suffice in this place. Before going further, it may be well to mention that many of the vertebrate fossils from the Red and Coralline Crags, especially those found in the so-called nodule bed, exhibit unmistakable signs of rolling by the action of the sea ; and some of them have been undoubtedly derived from the breaking up of much older beds. These older derived Crag fossils are treated of in a separate section below. As regards the other fossils, some may quite likely have been washed out of strata a little older than even the Coralline Crag, but the majority, at all events, appear to belong to animals which flourished during some portion of the Pliocene epoch — the epoch in which the Crags themselves were deposited. From deposits in the county of newer age than the Forest Bed have been obtained remains of a considerable number of the ordinary British Pleistocene mammals. Those of the cave-lion {Felis leo spelcea), the otter [Lutra Intra), and a bear which has been identified with the North American grizzly (Ursus arctus horribilis) have, for instance, been recorded from Ipswich. The skull of a wolf {Cam's lupus) dug up from beneath the Norman tower in Bury St. Edmunds is, or was, in the museum of that town. Among the ungulate or hoofed mammals, the great extinct ox or aurochs [Eos taurus primigenius) has left its remains at Lowestoft, and, according to Mr. Norgate of Bury St. Edmunds, at Maid's Cross, Lakenheath. Numerous bones and teeth of the Celtic shorthorn and pig, as well as red deer antlers, were dug up some years ago in a blackish stratum about a couple of feet below the surface at West Stow Heath, in association with Saxon implements. Antlers of red deer, fallow deer 31