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Not a few of the other mammalia of the Limagne belong undoubtedly to genera and species elsewhere proper to the Lower Miocene. Thus, for example, the Cainotherium of Bravard, a genus not far removed from the Anoplotherium, is represented by several species, one of which, as I learn from Mr. Waterhouse, agrees with Microtherium Renggeri of the Mayence basin.
I said just now that, in the existing Fauna, the group of pig-like animals and the group of ruminants are entirely distinct; but one of the first of Cuvier's discoveries was an animal which he called the Anoplotherium, and which proved to be, in a great many important respects, intermediate in character between the pigs, on the one hand, and the ruminants on the other.
Like the Anoplotherium and the Palæotherium, therefore, Archæopteryx tends to fill up the interval between groups which, in the existing world, are widely separated, and to destroy the value of the definitions of zoological groups based upon our knowledge of existing forms.
"From all these established facts, there does not seem to be the smallest foundation for supposing that the new genera which I have discovered or established among extraneous fossils, such as the paleoetherium, anoplotherium, megalonyx, mastodon, pterodactylis, etc., have ever been the sources of any of our present animals, which only differ so far as they are influenced by time or climate.
Like that great thinker, he proceeded from deduction to deduction before drawing his conclusions, and reconstructed the past career of a conscience as Cuvier reconstructed an Anoplotherium. When considering a brief he would often wake in the night, startled by a gleam of truth suddenly sparkling in his brain.
In 1800 he finds a few teeth, in following years a few bones; and after many years' patience and skill he ascertains and demonstrates the existence and place of a number of tapir-like animals which he classed as Lophiodon Paleotherium and Anoplotherium, formerly abounding on the banks of the ponds which have left their mud and marl in the tertiary strata of the Paris basin.
Thus the teeth of man constitute a regular and even series without any break and without any marked projection of one tooth above the level of the rest; a peculiarity which, as Cuvier long ago showed, is shared by no other mammal save one as different a creature from man as can well be imagined namely, the long extinct 'Anoplotherium'. The teeth of the Gorilla, on the contrary, exhibit a break, or interval, termed the 'diastema', in both jaws: in front of the eye-tooth, or between it and the outer incisor, in the upper jaw; behind the eyetooth, or between it and the front false molar, in the lower jaw.
Among these were several species of Palaeotherium, a genus before alluded to. These were associated with the Anoplotherium, a tribe intermediate between pachyderms and ruminants. One of the three divisions of this family was called by Cuvier Xiphodon. There are three superimposed masses of gypsum in the neighbourhood of Paris, separated by intervening deposits of laminated marl.
Again, all the great groups of the Ruminants, the Bovidoe, Antilopidoe, Camelopardalidoe, and Cervidoe, are represented in the Miocene epoch, and so are the Camels. The Upper Eocene Anoplotherium, which is intercalary between the Pigs and the Tragulidoe, has only two, or, at most, three toes.
Like the Anoplotherium and the Palæotherium, therefore, Archaopteryx tends to fill up the interval between groups which, in the existing world, are widely separated, and to destroy the value of the definitions of zoological groups based upon our knowledge of existing forms.
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