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Updated: August 22, 2024


At Meup's Bay, in particular, Professor E. Forbes examined minutely, in 1850, the organic remains of this group, displayed in a continuous sea-cliff section, and it appears from his researches that the Upper, Middle, and Lower Purbecks are each marked by peculiar species of organic remains, these again being different, so far as a comparison has yet been instituted, from the fossils of the overlying Hastings Sands and Weald Clay.

The features which attract the eye in the Purbecks, such as the dirt-beds, the dislocated strata at Lulworth, and the Cinder-bed, do not indicate any breaks in the distribution of organised beings.

Hooker, that there are Carboniferous plants which appear to be generically identical with some now living; that the cone of the Oolitic 'Araucaria' is hardly distinguishable from that of an existing species; that a true 'Pinus' appears in the Purbecks, and a 'Juglans' in the Chalk; while, from the Bagshot Sands, a 'Banksia', the wood of which is not distinguishable from that of species now living in Australia, had been obtained.

An Australian fauna would be found underlying an American fauna, and the transition from the one to the other would be as abrupt as that between the Chalk and lower Tertiaries; and as the drainage-area of the newly formed extension of the American continent gave rise to rivers and lakes, the mammals mired in their mud would differ from those of like deposits on the Australian side, just as the Eocene mammals differ from those of the Purbecks.

It will be observed that the division of the Purbecks into upper, middle, and lower, was made by Professor Forbes strictly on the principle of the entire distinctness of the species of organic remains which they include. The lines of demarkation are not lines of disturbance, nor indicated by any striking physical characters or mineral changes.

Among the twelve or fourteen species of Mammalia which are said to have been found in the Purbecks, not one is a member of the orders Cheiroptera, Rodentia, Ungulata, or Carnivora, which are so well represented in the Tertiaries. No Insectivora are certainly known, nor any opossum-like Marsupials.

Hooker, that there are Carboniferous plants which appear to be generically identical with some now living; that the cone of the Oolitic 'Araucaria' is hardly distinguishable from that of an existing species; that a true 'Pinus' appears in the Purbecks, and a 'Juglans' in the Chalk; while, from the Bagshot Sands, a 'Banksia', the wood of which is not distinguishable from that of species now living in Australia, had been obtained.

An Australian fauna would be found underlying an American fauna, and the transition from the one to the other would be as abrupt as that between the Chalk and lower Tertiaries; and as the drainage-area of the newly formed extension of the American continent gave rise to rivers and lakes, the mammals mired in their mud would differ from those of like deposits on the Australian side, just as the Eocene mammals differ from those of the Purbecks.

Among the twelve or fourteen species of Mammalia which are said to have been found in the Purbecks, not one is a member of the orders Cheiroptera, Rodentia, Ungulata, or Carnivora, which are so well represented in the Tertiaries. No Insectivora are certainly known, nor any opossum-like Marsupials.

Hooker, that there are Carboniferous plants which appear to be generically identical with some now living; that the cone of the Oolitic Araucaria is hardly distinguishable from that of an existing species; that a true Pinus appears in the Purbecks and a Juglans in the Chalk; while, from the Bagshot Sands, a Banksia, the wood of which is not distinguishable from that of species now living in Australia, had been obtained.

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