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III.—On some Fossil Bird-Remains from the Siwalik Hills in the British Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

William Davies
William Davies
Affiliation:
Geological Department.
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Extract

The first part of the “Records of the Geological Survey of India” for 1879 contains some interesting notes by Mr. R. Lydekker, B.A., descriptive of a “few fragmentary bird-remains” recently obtained from the Tertiary deposits of the Siwaliks, and preserved in the Geological Museum at Calcutta. The subjects of most interest alluded to in this memoir are some bones referred to Dromœus, by Mr. Lydekker, and his remarks thereon, and upon some bones of kindred birds which form part of the extensive series of vertebrate remains collected in the same range of hills by the late Colonel Sir Proby T. Cautley, then Captain in the Bengal Artillery, and presented by him to the National Collection.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , January 1880 , pp. 18 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1880

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References

page 18 note 1 Most of these specimens were drawn on stone for the “Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis” of Falconer and Cautley; being one of a series of eighteen plates which were never printed for publication, and of which only one impression of each—a proof—has been preserved; the drawings having, during Dr. Falconer's lengthened absence in India, been erased from the stones. These impressions are deposited in the Geological Department of the British Museum; and explanations of the figures on each plate, which are respectively lettered A to R, are published in Dr. Falconer's “Palæontological Memoirs” (vol. i. pp. 538–554), edited by the late Charles Murchison, M.D., F.R.S.

page 19 note 1 Oiseaux fossiles de la France, tom. i. p. 449, tom. ii. p. 587.

page 21 note 1 These vertebræ were originally assigned by the finder to the “Swan”: this name being written on one of the series; and in a small pamphlet, descriptive of Siwalik fossils, entitled, “Memoirs by Major W. E. Baker, Bengal Engineers, on the Fossil Remains, presented by himself and Colonel Colvin, C.B., to the Museum of Natural History at Ludlow” (Ludlow, 1850), it is stated that “the remains of birds have been found in the Siwalik strata, but they are of rare occurrence, and consist of bones of grallæ or waders, and of a large kind of swan.” This, there can be no doubt, refers to the specimen above described.

page 22 note 1 Palæontologieal Memoirs, vol. i. p. 26.

page 22 note 2 Geographical Distribution of Animals, vol. i. p. 286.

page 23 note 1 The figure on the unpublished plate is not a faithful representation of the proximal articular surface.

page 23 note 2 Op. cit. tom. ii. p. 449.Google Scholar

page 25 note 1 Palæontological Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 23 and 26

page 25 note 2 Op. cit. tom. i. p. 260.Google Scholar

page 26 note 1 Frequent reference has been made to this unpublished plate of bird-remains, by reason of its importance in denoting the special objects selected by Dr. Falconer for illustration and description in the “Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis,” and by its occurring among the descriptions of the series of unpulished plates in Falconer's “Palæontological Memoirs,” vol. i. p. 554. It is also of importance to notice the fact that these plates have all been photographed at the expense of the Geological Survey of India, and copies may be obtained of the Autotype Company, London.