Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1892 — Remains of a Huge Animal. [ARTICLE]

Remains of a Huge Animal.

Some weeks ago, says an Irish contemporary, the workmen who are at present engaged in making the necessary excavations on the County Antrim side of the river for the new deep-water branch dock for the harbor commissioners found the greater portion of the skull of a large animal which has been identified beyond all doubts by experts as that of the gigantic Irish deer (cervus giganteus). It is evidently part of a remarkably fine head, being equal in size to the largest specimens in the Kildare street museum, Dublin. T?his interesting discovery was made in a stratum of peat about three feet in thickness and at a depth of twenty-four feet below harbor datum —that is, twenty-live feet below ordinary low-water level in the River Lagan, which is close by. It lay, therefore, not less than thirty-four feet from the present natural surface of the ground. This stratum of peat was also found on the County Down side of the river when the Alexandra Graving dock was being constructed a few years ago. It may be of sopne interest to note the curious variety of strata found in docks. Commencing at the bottom there is the bowlder clay, then fine red sand, then gray sand, next the thin layer of peat, in which the skull was found, then another thin layer of gray sand, next a very thick bed of estuarine clay, in which upward of fifteen varieties of fossils have been found, then a thin bed ot yellow sand and on top of all, a bed of clay and sand of recent formation. —Pall Mall Budget.