Geological Society of London

“ Young, and the local collections, he made his name known to geologists by discovering in 1858 the bones of birds in the phosphate bed of the upper greensand, near Cambridge, together with remains of large pterodactyles, which were afterwards described by Professor Owen. In the same year as that in which he received his Cambridge appointment he was elected a fellow of the Geological Society of London, being then only eighteen—an unprecedented circumstance. ”

“ Throughout are interspersed masses of current-bedded sand and occasional patches of iceborne clay.
The general absence from these beds of fossil remains may be ac- counted for by the conditions of deposit; they were formed in a strong current, which would be (except, perhaps, at the commencement and end of the period) unfavourable to the existence of animal life, while the remains of any plants or animals that may have come within its sweep would speedily be reduced by attrition, except of course those which were previously fossilized, and all of which are much rolled and waterworn. ”

“ Arctic conditions of climate began to prevail; and here and there patches of clay were dropped by icebergs, heralds of those to follow in such vast numbers during the Upper Glacial epoch. The contorted drift, which occupies a large area in the north-east portion of the district, was deposited during the early part of this submergence of the land; its mode of formation I consider to have been much the same as that of the Upper Boulder-clay presently to be considered. The contortions sometimes exhibited by this deposit are probably due to agencies acting on the clay at a subsequent period. ”

“ North of Cambridge it opens out into a broad expanse of fen-land, overlooked from the east side only by the high chalk range. Rarely do any beds lower than the Neocomian crop out; but by these and the Gault the Fen is skirted all the way to the sea.
The Chalk escarpment receded to its present position or thereabouts in the Pliocene period: during the progress of its submergence for, and reelevation after, the Eocene deposits it had been subjected to some disturbance, many small faults, flexures, and contortions being the result. ”

“ His first paper was read before the Manchester Geological Society in April 1843, on 'The Climate of the Coal Epoch.' His papers on the geology and fossils of south-western Scotland brought him into repute as a geologist, and in 1853 he was appointed professor of geology in Queen's College, Cork. In 1854 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1856 of the Royal Society of London. In 1876 he was required to add physical geography, zoology and botany, and mineralogy to his former curriculum, and this serious addition to his labours broke down his health ”

“ The physical features of the country, and its superficial deposits, are so closely connected that they must be considered together. The New Forest, and the neighbouring country between Poole and Southampton Water, is characterized by high level plains, very generally covered with gravel or brick-earth. ”

“ The raised shingle of the Foreland, the marine gravel of the south of Sussex, and the beach-deposits with sea shells at Avisford and Waterbeach are evidences that at a time geologically recent the land stood 80 or 100 feet lower. Flint implements, however, are found imbedded in gravel 120 feet above the sea on the Bournemouth cliffs, and 150 feet above the sea on Southampton Common; and an hypothesis which assumes that man existed when gravels, now 120 and 150 feet above the sea, were forming at or below the sea-level may be on that account alone considered as untenable. ”

“ We have seen that the Cambridge Valley was excavated in preglacial times, and that in all probability no Lower or Middle glacial beds were formed within its area. But when the Chalk was wholly submerged [10] , the sweeping currents, hitherto confined to the east side of the range, were replaced by an open sea extending over every part of East Anglia that does not now attain to an elevation of 500 feet. In this sea the icebergs laden with rocky débris from the north were slowly melted; and their freights, descending in mass, formed on the bottom the unstratified Boulder-clay. ”

“ As an example of the effects of a water-current, the author stated that at a colliery in the Forest of Dean the "Coleford-Hill-Delf " seam, which had a thickness of about 5 feet, was in one part of the colliery found to be entirely "washed out," the sandstone roof resting directly upon the underclay. In an adjoining area the coal was from 8 to 12 feet thick; and the author was of opinion that the coal, after its formation, but before the deposition of the roofing sandstone, had been entirely removed from one locality and piled up in the other by the action of a strong current of water. ”

“ The nature of the geological formation appears to have had no part in influencing the destruction or the preservation of the surface. Barton Clay, Bagshot Sand, and Headon Marls alike underlie the gravel of the New-Forest tableland, and have alike been removed over the area drained by the tributaries of the Boldre river, of which Lyndhurst is the centre. The gravel covering itself is probably the protective agent, and it may have been thinner or more loamy where the old surface has been destroyed. ”

“ That while the gravel covering these tablelands at the highest levels is of a far greater age than the valley-gravels of the rivers, the gravel near Bournemouth, on Beaulieu Heath, Titchfield Common, and at similar levels appears to be equivalent in position and age to the high-level valley-gravels, and also to the beach-deposits of Avisford and Waterbeach containing marine shells ”

“ Upper Glacial.—The Great Chalky Boulder-clay in East Anglia extends in mass, or in patches that once formed part of the main mass, over the northern half of the London Basin, the Pliocene area, and the dip slope of the Chalk, rises over the escarpment of the same formation, and plunges down into the Cambridge valley. ”

“ And, in conclusion, I may draw attention once more to the very remarkable fact, that, so far as the present evidence goes, the dry land of those Triassic epochs was as extensive in the old and northern New World as it is at the present day, and that, just as the mammalian and ornithic faunæ of these regions lead us to group North America, Europe, Asia, and South Africa in one vast Arctogæal province, so the affinities of the land reptiles of the Trias lead to the conclusion that at that epoch the same regions constituted a similar great distributional area. ”

“ Civilisation has so considerably changed the aspect of all our streams, it has so embanked them and drained their neighbourhood, that in order to appreciate the original conditions which made it impossible to find a crossing place below London one must consult the new sheets of the Ordnance Geological Survey. They give us the drift or top-soil—which alone of course concerns travel. In this new survey the area covered by alluvium and the line where that alluvium impinges upon the older and harder soils to the north and the south are very clearly marked. ”

“ But to name this great pelvic bone was a difficulty with me. I was under the impression that its broad, smoothly expanded surface might be best compared with that of an ischium [3] or pubis, and that this would be more suited to the broad depressed body (as I supposed it to be) of such a huge creature, than, by accepting it as an ilium, to admit the beast to have been narrow in the rear, like a bird, with the plane of the bone not much inclined from the vertical. ”

“ It is the bone which has been called 'clavicle' in Megalosaurus and Iguanodon by Cuvier and his successors, though the sagacious Buckland had hinted its real nature [6] . But these bones are not in the least like the clavicles of any known animal, while they are extremely similar to the ischia of such a bird as an ostrich; and in the only instance in which they have been found in tolerably undisturbed relation with other parts of the skeleton, namely, in the Maidstone Iguanodon, they lie, one upon each side of the body, close to the ilia. ”

“ Examining for this purpose the humeral extremity of the bone, and collecting all the examples, I found it was composed of two elements ossified together, these elements concurring on one edge to form an articular cavity. Of these elements the broader and shorter one, which extended toward the sternum, was coracoidian in form, and perforated in each of four specimens. If, as appeared now to be the case, this was the coracoid, surely the great heavy bone so long called by that name was a pelvic bone, and the restoration of the skeleton must proceed on an entirely new basis. ”

“ The Trias of North America has yielded the remains of two forms of reptiles, Clepsysaurus and Bathygnathus [12] . The teeth, jaw-fragments, and vertebræ of these reptiles have characters which are quite in accordance with those of the Dinosauria, to which group they have lately been referred by Cope and Leidy, and I entertain no doubt that they are Dinosauria; but, unfortunately, none of the remains which have been discovered belong to what may be called diagnostic bones, such as the ilium, the femur, or the tibia. ”

“ If the tibia without that epiphysis and the astragalus were found in the fossil state, I know not by what test they could be distinguished from the bones of a Dinosaurian. And if the whole hind quarters, from the ilium to the toes, of a half-hatched chicken could be suddenly enlarged, ossified, and fossilized as they are, they would furnish us with the last step of the transition between Birds and Reptiles; for there would be nothing in their characters to prevent us from referring them to the Dinosauria. ”

“ When the Stonesfield fossils came before me for lectures to a practical class, it was often my desire to present a sketch of the skeleton for comparison with that of a crocodile, and a pleasure to me to employ in this way such knowledge of the osteology of reptiles as a few dissections, now thirty or forty years ago, of each great reptilian group had fixed in my mind. ”

“ The determination of the structure of the shoulder-girdle threw open the homology of this bone, which clearly could not be a clavicle, whatever else it might be. The alternative position once more lay in the pelvis, and this time between the ischium and the pubis; and as the ilium was bird-like, might not the ischium, or pubis, be also expected to be ornithic in form? At any rate the bone answered remarkably well to the ischium of one of the Ratitæ.
Resemblances to the structures found in some birds had already been noted by Prof. Owen [1] in the sacrum of the Dinosauria ”

“ Prestwick has recently shown, that the lower English tertiaries form several distinct subdivisions, each marked by different conditions, and these conditions indicating ancient hydrographical and palæontological changes of importance. A conglomerate bed of round flint pebbles, mixed with yellow, green, or ferruginous sands, extends almost uninterruptedly from the Isle of Wight to Woodbridge, in Suffolk; this bed underlies the London clay, intercalated betwixt it and the plastic clay, and forms a well-marked geological horizon, dividing this formation from the older Eocene deposits. ”

“ With these exceptions, I do not know of the teeth of any carnivore with which those of the Glutton under consideration can be confounded.
The following Table shows the relation of the lower jaw of the Glutton from Plas Heaton to those found in the caves of Germany, and to a recent specimen preserved in the British Museum. The Welsh fossil in every dimension is larger than any of the rest, and must have belonged to an animal proportionally more robust than any of the others. ”

“ Even in point of etymological appropriateness, the term "Dinosauria" is no more fitting for reptiles of which some are small, than "Pachypoda" is for reptiles of which some have slender feet; but as Von Meyer's name has never obtained much currency, it may be well to allow justice to give way to expediency, and to retain the name of Dinosauria for those reptiles which agree in all the most important and characteristic parts of their structure with Megalosaurus and Iguanodon. ”

“ The middle of the centrum is narrower than the ends, and the whole centrum, seen sideways, looks remarkably flat and wall-sided. Any processes the vertebra possessed must have come off from the neural arch, and therefore there can be no doubt that this is a dorsal vertebra. Thus the length of the skull appears to have equalled that of about six dorsal vertebræ.
The teeth of this reptile leave no doubt as to its distinctness from Iguanodon; and, as I shall immediately bring forward evidence to prove, that difference is generic. I propose, therefore, to name it Hypsilophodon [1] Foxii. ”

“ The hard chalk lies immediately beneath the soft chalk. In this stratum there are no flint nodules. “ Its beds,” according to Mr. Farey, “ increase in hardness, until near the bottom where a whitish freestone is dug, at Totternboe in Bedfordshire, and at numerous other places; that brought from Ryegate and other quarries, of this stratum, south of London, is used as a fire-stone.” [11]
It has been generally supposed that these two strata of chalk are of one formation: but not only the absence of the flints, but the characters of their fossils prove them to be of distinct formations. ”

“ All these remains were found together. At four feet distance on the same level, and continuing the direction of the vertebral column, was a second series of seven vertebræ, five and two of them being respectively associated together. No remains of any other animal, or any other individual, were found along with these two skeletons, which clearly appertain to the same species. The evidence which they afford as to the nature of the reptiles to which they belonged, is therefore of very great value. ”