The district of the Mendip Hills at a higher level than now.
When we reflect on the vast quantities of the remains of the animals buried in the caves of so limited an area as the Mendip Hills, it is evident that there must have been abundance of food to have enabled them to live in the district. The great marsh now extending from Wells to the sea, and cutting off the Mendips from the fertile region to the south, was probably a rich valley at a higher level than at present, joining the westward plains now submerged under the Bristol Channel. An elevation of from 100 to 300 feet would produce the physical conditions necessary for the sustenance of the herbivora found in the caves both in South Wales and Somersetshire.
The characters of a Hyæna-den.
Fig. 93.—A and B, upper and lower jaws of Hyæna-whelp, Wookey.
The remains of the animals which have been eaten by the cave-hyæna, may be recognized by the following characters. All are more or less scored by teeth, and the only perfect bones are those which are solid, or of very dense texture. The skulls are represented merely by the harder portions. That of the woolly rhinoceros, for example, by the hard pedestal which supports the anterior horn (see [Fig. 30]). Several of these pedestals occurred in the Wookey hyæna-den. The lower jaws also have lost their angle and coronoid process, and are gnawed to the pattern of the shaded portion of [Fig. 92], the less succulent part bearing the teeth being rejected. This holds good of the jaws of all the animals so persistently, that out of more than two hundred from Wookey there was only one exception. The jaw of the glutton ([Fig. 82]), from Plas Heaton, is also gnawed to the same shape, and one of those of the cave-bear from the cavern of Lherm, considered by M. Garrigou to have been fashioned by the hand of man into an implement, seems to me, after a careful comparison in company with Dr. Falconer, referable solely to the gnawing of the hyæna. In [Fig. 92], the lower jaw of an adult hyæna is represented, and in [Fig. 93] (1) the upper and lower jaws of a hyæna-whelp. In the latter the teeth marks a and b are remarkably distinct.[199]
Fig. 94.—Left Thigh-bone of Woolly Rhinoceros gnawed by Hyænas; Shaded parts left. (Wookey Hole.)
The marrow-containing bones are also universally splintered away, until either the articular ends alone are left, as in [Fig. 80], or in some cases, as in that of the femur of woolly rhinoceros ([Fig. 94]), the dense central portion bearing the third trochanter is preserved. This fragment is extremely abundant in nearly all the hyæna-caves in this country. From the invariable habit of the hyæna leaving the bones of its prey in fragments of this kind, their dens are characterized by the absence of perfect long-bones and skulls, and consequently, when these occur in a cave it is certain proof that it was not occupied by these animals. In a great many caves, however, the gnawed fragments are associated with the perfect bones, as, for example, at Banwell, a circumstance that may be accounted for by the untouched carcases and the gnawed fragments being swept in from the surface by a stream falling into a swallow-hole. In all hyæna-dens also are large quantities of album græcum, as well as fragments of bone more or less polished by the friction of the hyæna’s feet.