Palaeonictis gigantea - an extinct carnivore fossil found during the construction of Tramlink at Park Hill

Members of the Tertiary Research Group and staff of the Natural History Museum took the opportunity provided by Tramlink construction to secure a large quantity of clay from the old railway cutting to the north of the Park Hill tunnels, on 20th and 21st October 1998. This will be examined for its fossil contents. The site is important for the discovery there, during 1883 when the Woodside & South Croydon Railway was being made, of several fossils new to science, including Gastornis klaasseni (a gigantic bird) and Coryphodon croydonensis (a mammal).

Dr. Jerry Hooker, of the Natural History Museum, has reported as follows:
'Although we shall not know the full results of the excavation in terms of yield, until the samples are processed, one bone that was unearthed during the dig has proved to be of great interest. When collected, only a small part of it was visible on a slab of clay, but when prepared out a few days later, it turned out to be a mammalian jaw fragment with two teeth, belonging to an extinct puma-sized carnivore called Palaeonictis gigantea. This animal is particularly rare and is only otherwise known from a few jaws and isolated teeth from France and Belgium. What is even more interesting is that etching on the surfaces of the teeth of the Croydon specimen indicates that it had been eaten and digested by an even larger predator. A possible candidate for this is the giant flightless bird, Gastornis klaasseni, whose bones were found at exactly the same site in Sandilands cutting in 1883. Thus we can begin to piece together some of the events that may have taken place beside an ancient water hole in Croydon 55 million years ago.'

[Jerry Hooker's letter, dated 2^nd November 1998, is in the Joseph Firbank Society's archive; Hendericus Martinus Klaassen (1828 - 1910), who recorded the strata exposed while the railway cutting was being excavated in 1883, was an active member of the Croydon Microscopical & Natural History Club, and discoverer of the several fossils new to science, one of which was named after him.]

Paul W Sowan

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