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II. On the Fossil Neck-bones of a Whale (Palæocetus sedgwicki), from the Neighbourhood of Ely.*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Harry Seeley
Harry Seeley
Affiliation:
Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge
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Extract

Though the oldest English Whales yet named are found in the Crag, Prof. Sedgwick, a quarter of a century since, obtained from Ely some anchylosed cervical vertebræ evidently Cetacean. The fossil was found at Roswell Pit in the Boulderclay, but the Professor writes, ‘I have not the shadow of a doubt that it was washed out of the Kimmeridge (or the Oxford) Clay, for both clays are near at hand. In condition it is exactly like the bones from those clays; and is utterly unlike the true Gravel bones, whether in the dry Gravel, or the Till.’* This is unmistakeable, for the specimen is mineralised with phosphate of lime; and so could have been derived from no deposit newer than the Crag.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 2 , Issue 8 , February 1865 , pp. 54 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1865

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Footnotes

*

This paper was read before the Phil. Soc. Cambridge, May 2, 1864.

References

page 55 note * Letter in ‘British Fossil Mammals,’ p. 520.

page 56 note * While this was printing, I have been indebted to Dr. Gray for his memoir on British Cetacea; and am able to add that it also resembles Physalus, being nearest to Ph. Sibbaldii (Gray): in which the lateral processes of the axis resemble those of the fossil more closely than those in Balænoptera do; but after the second, they do not form rings, in that species, while Physalus has all the vertebræ free. Palæocetus appears to connect these two genera.