LONDON UNDER SEA

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 October 1928, Page 7

LONDON UNDER SEA

PREHISTORIC MARINE LIFE. LONDON, August 8. A Jules Verne feat, with a difference, will be performed by passengers using the new Underground station at Piccadilly Circus. They will ride on a moving stairway through an ocean bed and stand where the earliest forms of fish life used to abound.

Strangely enough, this stirring adventure does not demand a.descent of 20,000 fathoms —an insignificant 15ft will be ample.

When this part of London was under the sea the briny waters were only 12ft to 15ft deep. Piccadilly Circus has been built on what geologists describe as “the second terrace,” which used to be a great bank of sand and gravel stretching well beyond the western limits of the London of today. Workmen engaged in building the new Underground station are constantly • coming across proofs of ancient sea. life in the present centre of the civilised world. That latest is the shell of a nautilus mollusc, or softbodied animals of the snail specie. Mr H. Dewey, of the Geological Survey and Museum, considers the most interesting find some fossilised wood containing toredo, a tiny mollusc, commonly known as a ship worm. This marine insect bores only in submerged wood, and the fossiled woods recovered were 30ft helow the road surface.