[759] See Mag. Nat. Hist. 1839, p. 450; Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1842, p. 73; and Brit. Foss. Mam. p. 71, fig. 22.
But the specimens above described are far surpassed in interest by those discovered in the Triassic Bone-bed of Würtemberg and in the Oolite of Stonesfield; the latter consisting of several jaws and teeth of marsupial animals.
Triassic Mammalian Teeth.—In the thin layer of rolled bones, teeth, scales, and coprolite, so extensively spread over the top of the Trias and at the base of the Lias, both in England and in Würtemberg, and well known to collectors as the "Bone-bed" of Aust Cliff, &c. (Wond. p. 529), a few minute mammalian teeth have been discovered by M. Plieninger at Diegerloch, near Stuttgart, Würtemberg. They appear to have belonged to one or more small Insectivorous quadrupeds, and have been described by Plieninger and Jäger. Sir C. Lyell, in the Prefatory Note to his Manual, 1852, fully treats of these interesting and most ancient mammalian remains, and gives several exact figures of the teeth.
STONESFIELD MAMMALIA.
Fossil Mammalia of Stonesfield.[760] [Lign. 265]. (Bd. pl. ii. Ly. p. 268. Wond. p. 510.)—The best known examples of the fossil remains of mammalia in the Secondary formations, and, excepting the teeth just mentioned, of the highest antiquity, according to our present knowledge of the earth’s physical history, are several mutilated lower jaws with teeth, of some very small animals, which are supposed to belong to insectivorous marsupial quadrupeds.[761]
[760] See Owen’s Brit. Foss. Mam. pp. 29-70, figs. 15-20; and Petrifactions, p. 401, et seq.
[761] A small mammalian vertebra from Stonesfield is in Mr. Morris’s collection, and has been figured by Mr. Bowerbank, Quat. Geol. Jour. vol. iv. pl. i. fig. 4, and pl. ii. fig. 6.
Lign. 265. Lower Jaws of Mammalia; nat.
Great Oolite. Stonesfield.