PREHISTORIC PEEPS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 230, 26 September 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

PREHISTORIC PEEPS.

HUGE ANIMALS' REMAINS,

For some days past the London "Daily Chronicle" lias been affording Fleet-street wayfarers with a "prehistoric peep" in the shape of a skull, and some odds and ends of the body bones of an animal which lived in England some thousands of years ago. The remains are supposed to be those of rhinosceros, and judging by the size of the jawbone and* the" molars still embedded thei'em the creature was somewhat more formidable as to bulk than its descendants as seen by hunters in Africa to-day. The bones were found, not far from Fleetstreet, in blue clay, nearly thirty feet below the present street level, and though all evidence points to an interment of thousands of years, the portion of the skull exhibited is in a very good state of , preservation. Unfortunately, only a few odd pieces of bone were discovered to represent the rest of the animal, so it is impossible to do more than <>'uess its pro portions in life.

The discovery of these remnants of a long past age has drawn attention to a vastly more, important "find" which has been recently added to the Zoological Museum at St. Petersburg, viz., an upiqv.a Spepiinen of an extinct mammoth from Siberia. It is known that the, mammoth ranged over almost the whole of Europe immediately after the age of "ice, ami lingered down to the later jdajs of Palaeolithic Man, as we can ascertain; from sketches of rb-en-graved, in one case, at .least, on its own ivory, by -contemporary artists, and it has been found in the flesh, at more than one locality in Siberia. In his "The Mammoth 'and the Flood" Sir 11. Howarth collected a number of instances of such discoveries, and more than, one specimen has been brought to §£, Petersburg during the past century. But all these have been more or less imperfect, and were seriously damaged before being examined by any competent observer. .But the present specimen met a morß kindly fate. It was first disclosed by a landslip on the bank,of the River 13eresowka. in Yakutsk, about latitude s~deg., 30. This uncovered the htad, and its flesh was so well preserved that, though it had been frozen meat for several thousand years, foxes and other animals began to feed on it. Happily, however the Governor had 2firly news of the discovery and took measures to protect the body. He communicated with St. Petersburg. A commission, headed by Dr. Otto Herz, was despatched to disinter the carcase and convey it to the metropolis. It ia thus the first; specimen to be exhumed and preserved by the best modern methods. The skin has been softened and mounied by a skilful taxidermist, and now, after a little mending* and restoration, shows the mammoth, a young male of rather small size, as distinctly as if it had been obtained from a living speciß-.en. The skeleton has been pet up separately, and nil the important softer parts have been preserved for study. The stuffed specimen has been mounted in the exact posture in which it stood in the ice, frozen sand, and grivel in which it had been preserved. That posture is of interest, for different opinions have advanced as to the exact c-iiuse. of the death of these largo quadrvpeds. Their bones are numerous in Siberia, and are often found much further north, and it has been suggested tha-i; tliey met their death further south, and were swept down to a muddy and frozen grave by flooded rivers. Sir H. Howarth maintains that they, together with some other large quadrupeds and Palaeolithic man, perished in an extensive deluge, the tradition of which was preserved in that of the Flood. Most geologists, however, think that while some may have found a watery grave, others have been entrapped and engulfed in bogs and snowdrifts—a fate to which heavy animals are specially Mable in such'a region as the Siberian tundra. In uncovering this specimen Dr. Hertz found that the two fore limbs were spread widely apart and sharply bent at the wrist, while the

hind limbs were completely' turned fo*» ward beneath the body—an attitude which suggests a fruitless struggle for life in a material like quicksand. Moreover the mouth was filled with grass, which had been neither chewed nor swallowed; the tongue was protruding and the cavity of the chest was filled with ! clotted' blood. The natural conclusion, therefore, is that this particular mammoth fell into a natural trap and died suddenly from the bursting of a blood vessel near the heart while struggling to extricate itself.