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But in parts of England, more especially in Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, there are superficial formations of clay with glaciated boulders, and of sand and pebbles, containing occasional, though rare, patches of shells, in which the marine fauna begins to depart from that now inhabiting the neighbouring sea, and comprises some species of mollusca not yet known as living, as well as extinct varieties of others, entitling us to class them as Newer Pliocene, although belonging to the close of that period and chronologically on the verge of the later or Post-pliocene epoch.
The testimony of disinterested observers seems to be sufficient as to the human contrivance manifest in these flints; and the concurrence of various scientific men hardly leaves room for doubt that these deposits are of great antiquity, preceding the time in which the surface of France took its present form, and dating back to what is called the Post-Pliocene Period.
Did no opposing traditions stand in the way, we are quite sure the evidence elicited from this examination would at once fix its character as a burial place, of an antiquity coeval with the existence of the great extinct mammalia of the post-pliocene period. It, however, contains some features of special interest.
A broad depression the Aral-Caspian desert has arisen where the plateau-belt has reached its greatest height and suddenly changes its direction from a north-western into a north-eastern one; this desert is now filled only to a small extent by the salt waters of the Caspian, Aral and Balkash inland seas; but it bears unmistakable traces of having been during Post-Pliocene times an immense inland basin.
On the whole, the rocks of the Grand Canary, an island of a nearly circular shape, and 6 1/2 geographical miles diameter, exhibit proofs of a long series of eruptions beginning like those of Madeira, Porto Santo, and the Azores, in the Upper Miocene period, and continued to the Post-Pliocene.
B. Dowler to have been buried at least fifty thousand years in the coral reefs of Florida, in which fossil human remains were found, estimated by Professor Agassiz to have an antiquity of ten thousand years in the recent deposits of seas and lakes, in the central district of Scotland, which bears clear traces of an upheaval since the human period, and in the raised beaches of Norway and Sweden passing over these for want of space for minute detail, we go back to the post-pliocene period, and find the bones of man and works of art in juxtaposition with the fossil remains of extinct mammalia.
I called attention in 1830 to the fact, which had not at that time attracted notice, that the association in the Post-pliocene deposits of shells, exclusively of living species, with many extinct quadrupeds betokened a longevity of species in the testacea far exceeding that in the mammalia.
As to these flint implements, they are chiefly knives, hatchets, and instruments of that sort, and they have been found in such large numbers, and such diverse localities, and so uniformly in close proximity with the remains of the same species of extinct mammalia, that the evidence derived from them is, to say the least, of a very weighty character, and in the opinion of Sir Charles Lyell clearly establishes the fact that Elephas primigenius, Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros tichorrhinus, Ursus speloeus, and other extinct species of the post-pliocene alluvium, coexisted with man.
The most southern memorials of ice-action and of a Post-pliocene fauna in Great Britain is on the coast of the county of Sussex, about 25 miles west of Brighton, and 15 south of Chichester. A marine deposit exposed between high and low tide occurs on both sides of the promontory called Selsea Bill, in which Mr.
Comparative Longevity of Species in the Mammalia and Testacea. Teeth of Recent and Post-pliocene Mammalia. We have seen in the last chapter that the uppermost or newest strata are called Post-tertiary, as being more modern than the Tertiary. It will also be observed that the Post-tertiary formations are divided into two subordinate groups: the Recent, and Post-pliocene.
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