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Where, then, must we look for its five-toed ancestor? If we follow down other lines of recent and tertiary Ungulata, the same question presents itself. The Pigs are traceable back through the Miocene epoch to the Upper Eocene, where they appear in the two well-marked forms of Hyopotamus and Chaeropotamus; but Hyopotamus appears to have had only two toes.
Another doomed race of the time is represented by the Hyopotamus, an animal between the pig and the hippopotamus; and the Oreodontids, between the hog and the deer, were another unsuccessful branch of the early race. The hippopotamus itself was widespread in Europe, and a familiar form in the rivers of Britain, in the latter part of the Tertiary.
The mammalia, among which is Hyopotamus bovinus, differ, so far as they are known, from those of the Bembridge beds. The Hyopotamus belongs to the hog tribe, or the same family as the Anthracotherium, of which seven species, varying in size from the hippopotamus to the wild boar, have been found in Italy and other part of Europe associated with the lignites of the Lower Miocene period.
Where, then, must we look for its five-toed ancestor? If we follow down other lines of recent and tertiary Ungulata, the same question presents itself. The Pigs are traceable back through the Miocene epoch to the Upper Eocene, where they appear in the two well-marked forms of Hyopopotamus and Choeropotamus; but Hyopotamus appears to have had only two toes.
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