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Updated: June 24, 2025
On the other hand, it would be absurd to regard him as totally severed from them. It is the great degree of difference I would insist upon, bodily, mental, and spiritual, which precludes the idea of his having been evolved by exactly the same processes, and with the same limitations, as, for example, the horse from the palaeotherium."
Indeed, as we have seen, Cuvier regarded his remains of Anchitherium as those of a species of Palaeotherium. I think that this opinion was fully justifiable; but the progress of investigation has thrown an unexpected light on the question, and has brought us much nearer than could have been anticipated to a knowledge of the true series of the progenitors of the horse.
Lily-pads are floating on the stream which makes the central part of the picture; large herds of the Palaeotherium, the ancient Pachyderm, reconstructed with such accuracy by Cuvier, are feeding along its banks; and a tall bird of the Heron or Pelican kind stands watching by the water's edge.
At the bottom of these sands a green clay occurs, containing a small oyster, Ostrea cyathula, Lam., which, although of slight thickness, is spread over a wide area. This clay rests immediately on the Paris gypsum, or that series of beds of gypsum and gypseous marl from which Cuvier first obtained several species of Palaeotherium and other extinct mammalia.
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.
BRITISH. Bembridge fluvio-marine strata. Helen's series. FOREIGN. Gypsum of Montmartre, fresh-water with Palaeotherium. BRITISH. Bracklesham beds and Bagshot sands. FOREIGN. Calcaire grossier, miliolitic limestone. Nummulitic formation of Europe, Asia, etc. BRITISH. London Clay proper. FOREIGN. Argile de Londres, near Dunkirk. BRITISH. Upper white chalk, with flints.
In fact, it held, in some respects, an intermediate position, tending to bridge over the interval between these two groups, which in the existing fauna are so distinct. In the same way, the Palaeotherium tended to connect forms so different as the tapir, the rhinoceros, and the horse.
But it is precisely the Palaeotherium d'Orléans which is the type of Christol's genus Hipparitherium; and thus, though Hipparitherium is of later date than Anchitherium, it seemed to me to have a sort of equitable right to recognition when this address was written. Again, the skeleton of Anchitherium is extremely equine.
In the same Binstead stone Mr. The Palaeothere above alluded to resembled the living tapir in the form of the head, and in having a short proboscis, but its molar teeth were more like those of the rhinoceros. Palaeotherium magnum was of the size of a horse, three or four feet high.
But in the fact that there are only six full-sized grinders in the lower jaw, the first premolar being very small; that the anterior grinders are as large as, or rather larger than, the posterior ones; that the second premolar has an anterior prolongation; and that the posterior molar of the lower jaw has, as Cuvier pointed out, a posterior lobe of much smaller size and different form, the dentition of Anchitherium departs from the type of the Palaeotherium, and approaches that of the Horse.
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