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Among the extinct species formerly contemporary with man, no fossil quadruped has so often been alluded to in this work as the mammoth, Elephas primigenius. From a monograph on the proboscidians by Dr. Falconer, it appears that this species represents one extreme of a type of which the Pliocene Mastodon borsoni represents the other. Between these extremes there are already enumerated by Dr.
The proboscidians culminated in the Pliocene, when some of the giant elephants reached a height of fourteen feet. THE ARTIODACTYLS comprise the hoofed Mammalia which have an even number of toes, such as cattle, sheep, and swine. Like the perissodactyls, they are descended from the primitive five-toed plantigrade mammals of the lowest Eocene.
"No," said the Depth of Degradation, "they have already fallen to me." The Man and the Wart A Person with a Wart on His Nose met a Person Similarly Afflicted, and said: "Let me propose your name for membership in the Imperial Order of Abnormal Proboscidians, of which I am the High Noble Toby and Surreptitious Treasurer. Two months ago I was the only member. One month ago there were two.
The long ages of the Eocene and the following epochs of the Tertiary were times of comparatively rapid evolution among the Mammalia. The earliest forms evolved along diverging lines toward the various specialized types of hoofed mammals, rodents, carnivores, proboscidians, the primates, and the other mammalian orders as we know them now.
THE PROBOSCIDIANS. This unique order of hoofed mammals, of which the elephant is the sole survivor, began, so far as known, in the Eocene, in Egypt, with a piglike ancestor the size of a small horse, with cheek teeth like the Mastodon's, but wanting both trunk and tusks. The DINOTHERE was a curious offshoot of the line, which developed in the Miocene in Europe.
With it occurs also an extinct form of Hippopotamus, called Hexaprotodon, and a species of Hippotherium and pig, also two species of Mastodon, two of elephant, and three other elephantine proboscidians; none of them agreeing with any fossil forms of Europe, and being intermediate between the genera Elephas and Mastodon, constituting the sub-genus Stegodon of Falconer.
The Glyptodon was a mailed edentate, eight feet long, resembling the little armadillo. These edentates survived from Tertiary times, and in the warmer stages of the Pleistocene ranged north as far as Ohio and Oregon. The great proboscidians of the Glacial epoch were about the size of modern elephants, and somewhat smaller than their ancestral species in the Pliocene.
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