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6. On the Bones of a Seal found in Red Clay near Grangemouth, with Remarks on the Species
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2014
Extract
Towards the end of last autumn, one of my pupils, Mr William Stirling, B.Sc., requested me to determine some bones which had been found whilst sinking a new shaft for a pit in the Grangemouth coal-field. On examination, I found these bones to be the two halves of the lower jaw, a fragment of the upper jaw with some loose teeth, the right temporal bone, the atlas with fragments of other vertebræ, the glenoid part of the left scapula, the right astragalus and femur, and small fragments of other bones of the skeleton of a seal. The animal had not reached the adult state, for the epiphyses of the femur were not united to the shaft. The bones were imbedded in a stiff red clay.
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- Proceedings 1869-70
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1872
References
page 106 note * In a paper read before the Geological Society of Edinburgh, May 1869, and published in their Transactions, Mr Jas. Croll has given an account of the geology of this district; and in a paper read before the Geological Society of Glasgow, April 2, 1868 (Transactions, iii. p. 133), Mr Jas. Bennie has recorded the results obtained in the course of “boring” operations in the valley of the Clyde near Bowling, the haugh of Balmore, the valley of the Kelvin, and round by the south-eastern end of the Campsie Hills into the valley of the Forth, near Grangemouth, which reveal that “a great deep hollow stretched from sea to sea; fairly splitting Scotland in twain.”
page 107 note * Memoirs of Wernerian Society, v. 572.
page 107 note † Proc. British Association, Sept. 1858.
page 107 note ‡ Since my paper was read to the Royal Society, Dr Page has informed me that he obtained a second young seal's skeleton from the Stratheden clay, which is now in the Museum of Natural History, St Andrews. Nearly perfect skeletons of the surf and eider ducks, Oidema and Somateria, were found in the same clay. Dr Page also tells me that he has obtained seal's bones from the brick clays at Garbridge and Seafield, near St Andrews; from a brick-field at Dunbar; and from brick clay at Invernetty, Aberdeenshire. These clays are in the same horizon as the Stratheden clay. I find also that the skeleton of the young seal, in the St Andrew's Museum, has been carefully described by Mr R. Walker (Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Nov. 1863). He shows clearly that it is not Callocephalus vitulinus, and he considers it to be a young individual of P. groenlandicus. I have not yet examined this specimen.
page 107 note § Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, April 19, 1858. and March 21, 1859.
page 108 note * Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xxiv. p. 629.
page 112 note * The geology of this district has been carefully described by Dr Howden in the Trans. Ed. Geolog. Soc. 1867–68.
page 112 note † These skulls were procured in the Spitzbergen seas during the arctic expedition conducted last summer by Mr Lamont.