Lign. 251. Teeth of a Ruminant. Pleistocene. Gibraltar.
Imbedded in a mass of the "osseous breccia."
II. Fossil Ruminants. (Owen’s Brit. Foss. Mam. p. 444, et seq.)—The fossil bones of animals of this order are very numerous in the alluvial deposits, in caves, and in pleistocene deposits, in almost every part of the world. They are generally associated with the remains of the next group. The skulls of Oxen, and horns and bones of the Bison and Auroch, have been found in North Cliff, Yorkshire, at Walton in Essex, and other parts of England. The fossil oxen appear to have been one-third larger than the recent species; and the horns are relatively more massive than in the domestic race; some of the horns measure four feet across, at the widest expansion. In the immense accumulations of large mammalia in the tertiary beds of the Sub-Himalayan or Siwalik range, numerous remains of oxen occur. The teeth of one species are often found in the Elephant-bed at Brighton.
Of the Deer family the relics of several kinds have been discovered in Drift and Caverns. The cave of Kirkdale alone contained the remains of three species.[738] The bones of a species that cannot be distinguished from the common Bed Deer are found in the modern shell-marls of Scotland, associated with the remains of oxen, horse, boar, dog, wolf, and beaver. The bones and antlers of the Reindeer have been found at Brentford and other places (Brit. Foss. Mam. p. 479; and Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1851. Sect. p. 69). The ossiferous caverns, which contain bones of Carnivora, also yield those of Deer; as the caves of Kirkdale and Banwell, &c. in England, and the celebrated caverns of Muggendorf, on the Continent. A species of Musk-deer has been found at Epplesheim; and bones of deer are associated with those of the Dinotherium, in Rhenish Hesse, in late Tertiary deposits. The teeth and a lower jaw, with other bones, of a species of deer, were obtained from the Brighton Elephant bed (Wond. p. 114).
[738] The Rev. Dr. Buckland’s Reliquiæ Diluvianæ; or, Observations on the Organic Remains found in Caves, Fissures, and Gravel; 1 vol. 4to. 1823, pl. viii. and ix.
The most celebrated fossil animal of this family is the Gigantic Stag or Deer of Ireland (see Petrif. p. 455; Wond. p. 132), whose bones and antlers are found in immense quantities in superficial marl, in Ireland, in the Isle of Man, and occasionally in England. (Geol. Journ. vol. iv. p. 42.) A skeleton that was found, almost entire, in marl abounding in fresh-water shells, at the depth of twenty feet, is six feet high, nine feet long, and nine and a half feet in height, to the top of the right horn. Some antlers are so large, that the interspace from one point to the other exceeds twelve feet.[739]
[739] See Pict. Atlas, pl. lxxi.; a good figure of the skeleton of the fossil Irish Deer is given in the Penny Cyclopædia, vol. viii. p. 364; for a detailed account of this gigantic animal, see Owen’s Foss. Brit. Mammalia, p. 444, and Charlesworth’s Journal, p. 87.
The Giraffe, the tallest of known quadrupeds, and now restricted to the deserts of Africa, was once a native of Europe and Asia, for fossil bones of a species of this remarkable ruminant have been found at Issoudun, in France, and in the Siwalik mountains, with several varieties of Elk and Deer.
Of the Camel, the only ruminant with incisor teeth in the upper jaw, a gigantic species has been discovered by Dr. Falconer and Captain Cautley, in the Siwalik range.