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How to See the British Museum in Four Visits by W. Blanchard Jerrold
page 78 of 221 (35%)
fossil bones, which cover the southern wall, the fossil turtles from
Sussex and other parts, and the great fossil thigh bones of reptiles
that have passed long since from the face of the earth, the visitor
should once more advance into the fourth room of the gallery.

In this room the wall cases are devoted to

FOSSIL ANIMALS.

Of these the most interesting specimens are the remains of the Marine
Lizards known as ichthyosauri from the English lias formation. To the
right on entering, against the eastern wall of the room, the visitor
should first notice the fossil remains of various carnivorous animals,
including the skulls and other osseous wrecks of hyenas, bears, &c.,
and also, carefully screened in an additional glass case, hereabouts,
the lower jaw of a marsupial animal on a slab of oolitic limestone--an
early deposit, in which the highest class fossils generally found are
the tortoises.

In this room, however, the visitor will notice the progress of early
creation--first, the zoophytes; then the fish lizards; then the fossil
ruminants; then the fossil carnivora. Examples of these fossil remains
are all included in the room which the visitor has now reached. First,
he should examine the fossil remains of the ichthyosauri, or fish
lizards, ranged in the first three wall cases, particularly that
eighteen feet in length, deposited in the third case, one on the upper
shelf of the fourth case, and another on the upper shelf of the fifth
case. The case marked F contains fossils of a higher order than the
reptiles, as the bones and antlers of deer, found in later strata of
the earth's crust; and on the top of the case are the horn and skull
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