VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY IN 1912 7 



habiting the area west of the watershed between the Atlantic 

 and Arctic Oceans. Here it may be mentioned that in a paper 

 published in the Zool. Anzeiger for 191 1 (vol. xxxvii. p. 107) 

 the same writer has taken the extraordinary course of proposing 

 the new generic term Bosovis — Bovovis it should be — for Ovibos 

 moschatus and restricting Ovibos to O. mackenzianus, apparently 

 oblivious of the fact that the former is the type of Ovibos. 



During the last two or three years a new contributor— Mr. 

 J. Chomenko (J. Khomenko) — to our knowledge of the mam- 

 malian palaeontology of the Russian empire has published 

 several papers on the Pliocene and Miocene faunas of Bessarabia. 

 In three of these, published in Trd. Obsc. jest., Kisinev, 19 10, 

 191 1 and 1912, the author describes remains of the beaver, of 

 the giraffe-like Helladotherium of the Pikermi beds of Attica, 

 and of an extinct camel ; the last being referred to in the title 

 of the paper as Camelns bessarabiensis, although it is stated in 

 the text that this is not meant to be a specific name ! In another 

 serial, the title of which I am unable to transliterate, the same 

 writer describes a jaw from Bessarabia identified with Cervus 

 ramosus of Croizet, a deer typically from the French Pliocene. 



In a fourth communication Mr. Chomenko {Ann. Geol. et 

 Min. de la Russie, vol xiv. pp. 148-66) describes mastodon 

 teeth from the Upper Pliocene of Southern Bessarabia, which 

 he regards as representing a new race of Mastodon arvernensis, 

 under the name of precursor. Reference may also be made to 

 a paper by Mr. G. Pontier {Ann. Soc. Geol. Nord, vol. xxxix. 

 PP- 3 3-7» l 9 l °) on a last lower molar of the South American 

 M. andium remarkable for carrying five, in place of the normal 

 four, ridges on the crown, thus showing an approximation to 

 the so-called tetralophodont mastodons, in which the number 

 of ridges on this tooth is always five. 



Hitherto such remains of fossil elephants as have been 

 discovered in Africa appear to have been more or less nearly 

 related to the existing Elephas africanus ; but in the Geological 

 Magazine (decade 5, vol. ix. pp. 1 10-13) Dr. C. W. Andrews 

 describes a fragmentary molar from the Nile near Khartum 

 which indicates a species akin to the European Elephas 

 meridionalis but with taller plates to the molars. 



The phylogeny and ancestry of the Proboscidea — from the 

 primitive forms of the Fayum Tertiary onwards — is reviewed by 

 Dr. Gunther Schlesinger at considerable length in the Jahrbuch 



