scholarly journals IV.—On the Discovery of a Skeleton of the Hippopotamus in Post-pliocene Drift near Motcomb, Dorset

1869 ◽  
Vol 6 (59) ◽  
pp. 206-208
Author(s):  
T. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Thin Section ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Green Sand ◽  
Weak State ◽  
Small Section ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Bison Priscus ◽  
Horn Core ◽  
Leg Bones

The existence of Post-pliocene deposits in this neighbourhood has until lately been quite unknown, nothing of the kind having been detected either by the Geological Survey or subsequent observers. However, in tlie winter of 1866, a small section was exposed in a brick-field situated on a low rising-ground at the first milestone out of Shaftesbtiry towards Gillingham, and known as Hawkers' Hill. The clay here dug for brickmaking is Kimmeridge, presenting fossilized bones of the Pliosaurus and Icthyosaurus, and very friable remains of an Ammonite, etc. The attention of the writer was first attracted to the Drift on observing, above part of the Kimmeridge clay, a thin section of soil of an ochreous tint due to oxide of iron, and somewhat resembling the loose stratum of chert and sand which caps the neighbouring Green-sand rock. He learnt on inquiring of the labourers that they had recently found some large bones in this deposit, but thinking them of no use they had wheeled them off with the rubbish, in which they then lay, efiectually re-buried. Much interested at this announcement, he induced the men again to remove the rubbish, and found that the bones were some vertebræ of a large mammalian animal, together with fragments of the ribs and leg-bones. They were, of course, not at all fossilized, and their original weak state had been sadly aggravated by a second burial and disinterment. Nothing more was turned out that winter, and it was not until the end of 1867, that digging was resumed. Further portions of the same skeleton were now found, including another instalment of vertebræ, and portions of the skull and jaws. With the latter were several teeth in a suffciently entire state to show that the creature weis undoubtedly a Hippopotamus; numerous fragments of the tusks affording further proof of this. The writer now frequently visited and watched “the diggings,” and after a short time two horn-cores, considerable portions of the skull, and some fragments of the leg-bones of Bison priscus of unusual size came to light. The more perfect horn-core is 18 inches long and 14: inches in diameter at the base.

VI.—New Devonian Fossils from Cornwall

1912 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-84
Author(s):  
Ivor Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Geological Survey ◽  
Short Time

A Short time ago a Devonian fossil of considerable interest was found in the grits of the Ladock neighbourhood. It had been found by a workman in a road-heap on the Grampound Road and was placed for preservation in the Truro Museum. A cast was kindly made by Mr. C. Davies Sherborn and presented to the Museum of Practical Geology [22466]. This fossil was named Orthis sp., and is referred to as such in the Memoir of the Geological Survey on the geology of the country near Newquay (p. 35).

The ledmorite dike of Achmelvich, near Lochinver, Sutherland

1952 ◽  
Vol 29 (216) ◽  
pp. 827-832
Author(s):  
P. A. Sabine
Keyword(s):  
Thin Section ◽  
Present Note ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
North West

In the Geological Survey memoir a dike is recorded cutting the Lewisian gneiss near Achmelvich, north-west of Lochinver, Sutherland. At the time the mapping was carried out no thin section was prepared of the rock, and the dike was presumed to be a continuation of the Canisp porphyry dike which is exposed in the river Inver near Lochinver and farther south-east.During an investigation of the post-Cambrian sills and dikes of Assynt and the adjoining districts of north-west Scotland, the writer examined the Achmelvich dike in some detail and recognized its affinities with the nepheline-syenites. It is the purpose of the present note to describe the field occurrence and petrography of the dike.

scholarly journals Finlay Lorimer Kitchin, 1870-1934

1934 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-352
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Specialized Training ◽  
University Of Munich ◽  
The University ◽  
Short Time

Finlay Lorimer Kitchin, the son of William Henry Kitchin, was born at Whitehaven on December 13, 1870. He was educated at St. Bees School and at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he spent four years (1890-1894), the last year being devoted entirely to the study of Geology and Palaeontology. Soon after leaving Cambridge he proceeded to the University of Munich, where he commenced research in palaeontology under the direction of Zittel, and graduated Ph.D. summa cum laude in 1897. In after years Kitchin valued equally the broad outlook which he gained in Cambridge and the more specialized training which he received in Munich. After working for a short time unofficially in the British Museum (Natural History) he was appointed Assistant Palaeontologist to the Geological Survey in 1898, and in 1905 he succeeded the late E. T. Newton as Palaeontologist—a post previously held by Edward Forbes, T. H. Huxley, J. W. Salter, and R. Etheridge.

John Smith Flett, 1869-1947

1948 ◽  
Vol 5 (16) ◽  
pp. 688-696
Keyword(s):  
Medical Practice ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Geological Museum ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Short Time

John Smith Flett, who died on 26 January 1947, at the age of seventy-seven, has left an abiding mark on British geology, both as a scientific investigator and as an official administrator. His scientific contributions dealt mainly with petrography and many of them were necessarily of a routine and official character. His greatest services to his science were undoubtedly those given during his fifteen years as Director of His Majesty’s Geological Survey. In the unsettled and transitional period between the wars, it was indeed fortunate for the Survey and for geology that a man of Flett’s stamp—in intellect keen and acute, in character resolute and virile—should be at the helm. Under his guidance there arose the magnificent Geological Museum at South Kensington —a monument to a vision persistently followed. When we contemplate the outstanding part that the geologists of this small island have played in the foundation and evolution of their science, we must rejoice that at last an exhibition worthy of that record can be made. Flett was born in Kirkwall, Orkney, and received his early education at the Burgh School of that town. He passed to George Watson’s College, Edinburgh, and thence to the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.A., B.Sc. (with honours in Natural Science), in 1892 and M.B., C.M., in 1894. During his academic career he gained an extraordinary variety of prizes, medals and scholarships. This was no ephemeral brilliance or inclination, and he maintained an interest in subjects outside his professional orbit all his life; he was especially attracted to literature of a somewhat caustic or satiric cast. After graduation, Flett was for a short time in medical practice but, in 1895, he forsook that career and turned himself for good to geology.

scholarly journals A Middle Pleistocene steppe bison find within the Dürnstein Castle (Wachau, Lower Austria)

2020 ◽  
Vol 113 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 237-250
Author(s):  
Florian A. Fladerer ◽  
Reinhard Roetzel ◽  
Kristof Veitschegger
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
Small City ◽  
Fluvial Sediments ◽  
Middle Palaeolithic ◽  
Species Succession ◽  
Basement Rocks ◽  
Steppe Bison ◽  
Bison Priscus ◽  
Leg Bones

AbstractIn the course of foundation works in the Dürnstein Castle cervical and front leg bones of a large Bison priscus bull were discovered in fluvial sediments. The small city of Dürnstein with its medieval centre is part of the UNESCO Wachau Cultural Landscape and is built mainly on Palaeozoic basement rocks. The find location is completely overbuilt, but remnants of fluvial sediments on the bones together with the altitude of the site approximately 17 m above the Danube point to a Middle Pleistocene fluvial aggradation level not younger than ca. 240,000 years, and the maximum age is 400,000 years. The fossil bearing location is interpreted as a small sandy bay of the Pleistocene Danube, protected from later degradation and erosion. Morphometric comparisons and taphonomic analyses of the bones allow the reconstruction of a scenario in which the bison probably had drowned in a flood and its carcass was buried quickly before destruction by scavengers or erosion. The study includes a comparison with bison specimens of an unpublished small megafaunal assemblage from adjacent Krems-Kreuzbergstraße. Processing marks on parts of these bones point to an anthropogenic Middle Palaeolithic influence and translocation. In addition, a tentative chronological sketch of the regional Bison species succession (B. menneri, B. schoetensacki, B. priscus) from the Early to the Late Pleistocene is presented.

scholarly journals II.—Notes on some Remains of Cryptocleidus from the Kellaways Rock of East Yorkshire

1900 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 535-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Sheppard
Keyword(s):  
Western Slope ◽  
White Sand ◽  
Small Section ◽  
Single Instance ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Made In

On visiting Brough a short time ago I noticed a small section had been made on the western slope of Mill Hill, about twenty or thirty feet below the top. The excavation is made in soft white sand, which is very ferruginous in places. Beds of hard sandstone, varying in thickness from one to three inches, traverse it in the upper part of the section. These beds of sandstone are practically horizontal, and contain casts of Belemnites Owenii, Gryphæa bilobata, Trigonia, and other characteristic Kellaways Rock fossils. In not a single instance was a portion of a shell remaining, the whole of the calcite having been dissolved away. There is only a thin covering of soil; and this contains numerous pebbles of doubtful origin, and some pieces of Roman pottery.

Notes on the Archaeology of the Utukok River, Northwestern Alaska

1948 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond M. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Arctic Ocean ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
United States Geological Survey ◽  
The Arctic Ocean ◽  
Important Exception ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Working Out

Early in May 1947, a United States Geological Survey field party of five was flown by ski plane to the headwaters of the Utukok River in northwestern Alaska, about 200 miles southwest of Barrow. Three 18–foot canvas boats of a special folding design were taken in along with enough equipment for four months. Food caches had been flown in to six localities on the 200–mile–long river a short time before the group landed. When the “break–up” came late in May the party started down the river working out the geology of the area from a series of 18 camps which were established before reaching the Arctic Ocean in August.During the season 17 archaeological sites were discovered. It is believed that most of these sites are of Eskimo origin and are probably fairly recent. However, an important exception is a well–made Folsom point, announcement of which has been made.

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