Chapter 20

PLEISTOCENE PERIOD.

Flint Implements in Cave containing Hyaena and other extinct Mammalia in Somersetshire. Caves of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales. Rhinoceros hemitoechus. Ossiferous Caves near Palermo. Sicily once part of Africa. Rise of Bed of the Mediterranean to the Height of three hundred Feet in the Human Period in Sardinia. Burial-place of Pleistocene Date of Aurignac in the South of France. Rhinoceros tichorhinus eaten by Man. M. Lartet on extinct Mammalia and Works of Art found in the Aurignac Cave. Relative Antiquity of the same considered.

WORKS OF ART ASSOCIATED WITH EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN A CAVERN IN SOMERSETSHIRE.

The only British cave from which implements resembling those of Amiens have been obtained, since the attention of geologists has been awakened to the importance of minutely observing the position of such relics relatively to the associated fossil mammalia, is that recently opened near Wells in Somersetshire. It occurs near the cave of Wookey Hole, from the mouth of which the river Axe issues on the southern flanks of the Mendips. No one had suspected that on the left side of the ravine, through which the river flows after escaping from its subterranean channel, there were other caves and fissures concealed beneath the green sward of the steep sloping bank. About ten years ago, a canal was made, several hundred yards in length, for the purpose of leading the waters of the Axe to a paper-mill, now occupying the middle of the ravine. In carrying out this work, about 12 feet of the left bank was cut away, and a cavernous fissure, choked up to the roof with ossiferous loam, was then, for the first time, exposed to view. This great cavity, originally 9 feet high and 36 wide, traversed the Dolomitic Conglomerate; and fragments of that rock, some angular and others water-worn, were scattered through the red mud of the cave, in which fossil remains were abundant. For an account of them and the position they occupied we are indebted to Mr. Dawkins, F.G.S., who, in company with Mr. Williamson, explored the cavern in 1859, and obtained from it the bones of the Hyaena spelaea in such numbers as to lead him to conclude that the cavern had for a long time been a hyaena's den. Among the accompanying animals found fossil in the same bone-earth, were observed Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Ursus spelaeus, Bos primigenius, Megaceros hibernicus, Cervus tarandus (and other species of Cervus), Felis spelaea, Canis lupus, Canis vulpes, and teeth and bones of the genus Equus in great numbers.

Intermixed with the above fossil bones were some arrowheads, made of bone, and many chipped flints, and chipped pieces of chert, a white or bleached flint weapon of the spearhead Amiens type, which was taken out of the undisturbed matrix by Mr. Williamson himself, together with a hyaena's tooth, showing that Man had either been contemporaneous with or had preceded the extinct fauna. After penetrating 34 feet from the entrance, Mr. Dawkins found the cave bifurcating into two branches, one of which was vertical. By this rent, perhaps, some part of the contents of the cave may have been introduced.*

(* Boyd Dawkins, "Proceedings of the Geological Society" January 1862.)

When I examined the spot in 1860, after I had been shown some remains of the hyaena collected there, I felt convinced that a complete revolution must have taken place in the topography of the district since the time of the extinct quadrupeds. I was not aware at the time that flint tools had been met with in the same bone-deposit.

CAVES OF GOWER IN GLAMORGANSHIRE, SOUTH WALES.

The ossiferous caves of the peninsula of Gower in Glamorganshire have been diligently explored of late years by Dr. Falconer and Lieutenant-Colonel E.R. Wood, who have thoroughly investigated the contents of many which were previously unknown. Among these Dr. Falconer's skilled eye has recognised the remains of almost every quadruped which he had elsewhere found fossil in British caves: in some places the Elephas primigenius, accompanied by its usual companion, the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, in others Elephas antiquus, associated with Rhinoceros hemitoechus, Falconer; the extinct animals being often embedded, as in the Belgian caves, in the same matrix with species now living in Europe, such as the common badger (Meles taxus), the common wolf, and the fox.

In a cavernous fissure called the Raven's Cliff, teeth of several individuals of Hippopotamus major, both young and old, were found; and this in a district where there is now scarce a rill of running water, much less a river in which such quadrupeds could swim. In one of the caves, called Spritsail Tor, bones of the elephants above named were observed, with a great many other quadrupeds of Recent and extinct species.

From one fissure, called Bosco's Den, no less than one thousand antlers of the reindeer, chiefly of the variety called Cervus Guettardi, were extracted by the persevering exertions of Colonel Wood, who estimated that several hundred more still remained in the bone-earth of the same rent.

They were mostly shed horns, and of young animals; and had been washed into the rent with other bones, and with angular fragments of limestone, and all enveloped in the same ochreous mud. Among the other bones, which were not numerous, were those of the cave-bear, wolf, fox, ox, stag, and field-mouse.

But the discovery of most importance, as bearing on the subject of the present work, is the occurrence in a newly-discovered cave, called Long Hole, by Colonel Wood, in 1861, of the remains of two species of rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus and R. hemitoechus, Falconer, in an undisturbed deposit, in the lower part of which were some well-shaped flint knives, evidently of human workmanship. It is clear from their position that Man was coeval with these two species. We have elsewhere independent proofs of his co-existence with every other species of the cave-fauna of Glamorganshire; but this is the first well-authenticated example of the occurrence of R. hemitoechus in connection with human implements.

In the fossil fauna of the valley of the Thames, Rhinoceros leptorhinus was mentioned as occurring at Gray's Thurrock with Elephas antiquus. Dr. Falconer, in a memoir which he is now preparing for the press on the European Pliocene and Pleistocene species of the genus Rhinoceros, has shown that, under the above name of R. leptorhinus, three distinct species have been confounded by Cuvier, Owen, and other palaeontologists:--

1. R. megarhinus, Christol, being the original and typical R. leptorhinus of Cuvier, founded on Cortesi's Monte Zago cranium, and the ONLY Pliocene, or Pleistocene European species, that had not a nasal septum.--Gray's Thurrock, etc.

2. R. hemitoechus, Falconer, in which the ossification of the septum dividing the nostrils is incomplete in the middle, besides other cranial and dental characters distinguishing it from R. tichorhinus, accompanies Elephas antiquus in most of the oldest British bone-caves, such as Kirkdale, Cefn, Durdham Down, Minchin Hole, and other Gower caverns--also found at Clacton, in Essex, and in Northamptonshire.

3. R. etruscus, Falconer, a comparatively slight and slender form, also with an incomplete bony septum,* occurs deep in the Val d'Arno deposits, and in the "Forest bed," and superimposed blue clays, with lignite, of the Norfolk coast, but nowhere as yet found in the ossiferous caves in Britain.

(* Falconer, "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society"