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Updated: June 11, 2025
However, what we do know of this Upper Eocene Fauna of Europe gives sufficient positive information to enable us to draw some tolerably safe inferences. It has yielded representatives of Insectivora, of Cheiroptera, of Rodentia, of Carnivora, of artiodactyle and perissodactyle Ungulata, and of opossum-like Marsupials.
They are widely and numerously spread on the surface of the earth, and therefore bear strongly on its history; but it is not among them that we find the high intellectual development with which many other animals are gifted. Squirrels are some of the most beautiful of the Rodentia, and chiefly live in trees.
After what has been said, it will not be difficult to perceive the meaning of the resemblances among mice of the house and field, and of rats and rabbits and squirrels. All of them possess heavy curved gnawing teeth, or incisors, and lack the flesh-tearing or canine teeth. They agree in many other respects which distinguish them as a separate natural order of the mammals called the rodentia.
When in this state the meat is, of course, quite uneatable; but the Gauchos assert, that if buried for some time in fresh earth, the taint is removed. I have somewhere read that the islanders in the north of Scotland treat the rank carcasses of the fish-eating birds in the same manner. The order Rodentia is here very numerous in species: of mice alone I obtained no less than eight kinds.
The inhabitants, Bushmen and Bakalahari, prey on the game and on the countless rodentia and small species of the feline race which subsist on these. In general, the soil is light-colored soft sand, nearly pure silica. The beds of the ancient rivers contain much alluvial soil; and as that is baked hard by the burning sun, rain-water stands in pools in some of them for several months in the year.
The wolf and similar forms belong to the sub-family of dogs; while the lion, tiger, etc., belong to the sub-family of cats; The Rodentia, or Gnawers, comprising the rat, the hare, the beaver, the squirrel, the mouse, etc., etc.; The Insectivora, or Insect Feeders, comprising the mole, the shrew, the hedgehog, etc.;
These facts make it probable that these animals are living representatives of a group which existed at a distant epoch of the world's history, and which possessed a structure partaking of the character of the two great orders Rodentia and Pachydermata now so widely distinct in the majority of forms.
We will begin, therefore, with the animals belonging to the ruminantia the eighth in natural order; taking next the carnivora the fifth; and the smaller rodentia the sixth; while the birds and reptiles will follow in due course.
However, what we do know of this Upper Eocene Fauna of Europe gives sufficient positive information to enable us to draw some tolerably safe inferences. It has yielded representatives of Insectivora, of Cheiroptera, of Rodentia, of Carnivora, of artiodactyle and perissodactyle Ungulata, and of opossum-like Marsupials.
Among the twelve or fourteen species of Mammalia which are said to have been found in the Purbecks, not one is a member of the orders Cheiroptera, Rodentia, Ungulata, or Carnivora, which are so well represented in the Tertiaries. No Insectivora are certainly known, nor any opossum-like Marsupials.
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