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Extinct Whales and Wombats: Squalodon

Squalodon (see Fig. 110) represents another extinct genus of cetaceans, of which very little is known beyond the teeth and skull. It was formerly classified with Zeuglodon, but its skull is more like that of a dolphin, although the teeth are somewhat like those of the former. Teeth and fragments of skulls of Squalodon have been frequently found in the marine European deposits of Miocene age-especially in the Vienna basin, many parts of France, and the Crag formations of Antwerp and of Suffolk; also / in strata of corresponding age in North America and New Zealand. A few isolated teeth occur in the cave-deposits of Italy. The Natural History Museum contains an excellent reproduction of the skull of Squalodon.

The researches of Dr. C. W. Andrews (see his catalogue referred to on p. 266) and Dr. E. Fraas in Egypt have revealed several earlier ancestors of the whales. Of these Protocetus appears to be derived from the Creodonts (early ancestors of the Carnivora). This is followed by Prozeuglodon.

Remains of the gigantic Sperm Whale or Cachalot (Physeter macrocephalus) are found in the Forest-bed of Cromer, and also FIG. 111. Skull of thick-toothed Grampus, Pseudorca crassidens. (Owen.) Fen, Lincolnshire. in a later deposit in South America. A number of Miocene and Pliocene forms allied to the Cachalot have been described under various names. Remains of the curious Narwhal, with its long spear-like tusk, have been found in the Norfolk forest-bed. Owen has described the skull of a thick-toothed Grampus that was found beneath the turf in the great fen of Lincolnshire, in the year 1843 (see Fig. 111). It belongs to the existing Pseudorca crassidens, but Owen thought it differed from the present dolphins of our own coasts. Extinct genera of dolphins are known to occur in some of the later Tertiary deposits of Europe and America.

EXTINCT WHALES AND WOMBATS 301 That whales were contemporary with the mammoth in this country is proved by an interesting discovery made in the year 1828, in a cliff near Brighton, under the following circumstances. On the face of the cliff, in the ancient shingle which lies immediately upon the chalk, some fishermen had observed a huge bone that had been laid bare by an unusually high tide, and now projected two or three feet beyond the face of the cliff. Unable to remove it, they broke off the extremity, and sent a fragment of it to Dr. Mantell, who went to the spot a few days afterwards, and found that they had demolished a considerable portion of the bone in their attempts to remove it from its bed, and had only desisted from fear of being buried beneath the overhanging cliff, which is composed of loose materials. At last, and not without some danger, the entire specimen was left exposed. It proved to be the front nine feet of the left branch of the lower jaw of a whale-bone whale. On attempting to remove the specimen it broke into a thousand pieces. So, as the tide was approaching, this interesting find had to be abandoned. It must have belonged to a whale from sixty to seventy feet long.