Outlines of Oryctology: An Introduction to the Study of Fossil Organic Remains; Especially Those Found in the British Strata: Intended to Aid the Student in His Inquiries Respecting the Nature of Fossils, and Their Connection with the Formation of the Earth ...

Front Cover
M.A. Nattali, 1830 - Paleontology - 350 pages

From inside the book

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 331 - ... elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, ox, two or three species of deer, bear,- fox, water-rat, and birds. The bones are for the most part broken, and gnawed to pieces, and the teeth lie loose among the fragments of the bones ; a very few teeth remain still fixed in broken fragments of the jaws.
Page 334 - ... evidence of the fate that has attended the carcases and lost portions of the bones whose fragments still remain. Three-fourths of the total number of bones in the German caves belong to two extinct species of bear, and two-thirds of the remainder to the extinct hyaena of Kirkdale. There are also bones of an animal of the cat kind, (resembling the jaguar or spotted panther of South America,) and of the wolf, fox, and polecat, and rarely of the elephant and rhinoceros.
Page 331 - ... quarry. It is on the slope of a hill about 100 feet above the level of a small river, which, during great part of the year, is engulphed. The bottom of the cavern is nearly horizontal, and is entirely covered to the depth of about a foot, with a sediment of mud deposited by the diluvian waters.
Page 331 - The hyaena bones are broken to pieces as much as those of the other animals. No bone or tooth has been rolled, or in the least acted on by water, nor are there any pebbles mixed with them. The bones are not at all mineralized, and retain nearly the whole of their animal gelatin, and owe their high state of preservation to the mud in which they have been imbedded. The teeth of the...
Page 334 - The general dispersion of bones of the same animals through the diluvian gravel of high latitudes, over great part of the northern hemisphere, shows that the period in which they inhabited these regions was that immediately preceding the formation of this gravel, and that they perished by the same waters which produced it. M. Cuvier...
Page 317 - The common African rhinoceros has a crooked horn resembling a cock's spur, which rises about nine or ten inches above the nose and inclines backward ; immediately behind this is a short thick horn ; but the head they brought had a straight horn projecting three feet from the forehead, about ten inches above the tip of the nose. The projection of this great horn very much resembles that of the fanciful unicorn in the British arms. It has a small thick horny substance, eight inches long, immediately...
Page 332 - England, and of great part of the northern hemisphere : four of them, the hysena, elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, belong to species that are now extinct, and to genera that live exclusively in warm climates, and which are found associated together only in the southern portions of Africa, near the Cape. It...
Page 334 - The latter is probably the same diluvian sediment which we find at Kirkdale. The unbroken condition of the bones, and presence of black animal earth, are consistent with the habit of bears, as being rather addicted to vegetable than animal food, and in this case, not devouring the dead individuals of their own species. In the...

Bibliographic information