Coleoptera from the upper peat bed at Horton Clay Pit, Small Dole, near Upper Beeding, West Sussex

In 1913 a series of beetle fossils were recovered from a peaty bed in the o verburden of a clay pit near Small Dole, Upper Beeding in West Sussex. Thes e remains were preserved in the Brighten Museum & Art Gallery, though no at tempt was made to identify them. This paper presents the results of a recen t study of these fossils. Altogether, 38 taxa of Coleoptera have been recog nized, enabling a detailed picture to be built up of the local environment, namely of a rather sour pool in largely open heathland with a sparse growt h of coniferous trees. Mutual Climatic Range analysis of the coleopteran as semblage shows that, although mean July temperatures were only a degree coo ler than those of the present day, mean January temperatures were about 6 d egrees C cooler than today. It is likely that these deposits date from the Brorup Interstadial near to the start of the last (Devensian, Weichselian) Glaciation.