86 
ORIGIN OF LIFE IN AMERICA 
Pleistocene times. Moreover, the Kamchatkan sheep (Ovis 
jiivicola) is generally looked upon as a very near relation 
to another Siberian wild sheep also inhabiting part of Kam¬ 
chatka, and which has been found fossil by Tcherski in the 
New Siberian Islands, viz., Ovis borealis. To judge by the 
recent as well as by the fossil sheep in America, the genus 
Ovis, to which all sheep belong, must, I think, have pene¬ 
trated to North America, together with the mammoth and 
other mammals, in comparatively recent geological times. 
I shall return to the distribution of the American sheep 
later on. 
I should have thought the genus to which the musk ox 
(Ovibos) belongs wa.s a better example of an American 
intruder into Asia. Although no longer inhabiting the Old 
World, its incursions into Asia and Europe must have taken 
place about the same time as the mammoth’s advent in 
America. A still more striking instance of an American in¬ 
vader into Asia is the camel, although Professor Osborn’s * 
statement, “ in the Pleistocene the camels wandered into Asia 
from America, while the bears passed them en route tq 
America,” can scarcely be considered as strictly correct, 
since two kinds of camels are known from the Pliocene 
Siwalik deposits of India. The brilliant researches of 
American palaeontologists have long ago acquainted us with 
the fact that the camel family (Camelidae) inhabited America 
since the dawn of the Tertiary Era, while the Indian occur¬ 
rences alluded to are the earliest indications of camels having 
reached the Old World. It is in Pliocene times, therefore, 
or earlier even, that a land connection between America and 
Asia must have existed, for no one would venture to propound 
the theory that camels could have crossed from one continent 
to another on an ice bridge. 
Sir Henry Howorthf collected in 189*2 some valuable testi¬ 
mony showing that the mammoth had lived in western Europe 
in pre-Glacial times. In the following year Dr. Tcherski J 
reminded us that a complete skeleton of the mammoth was 
* Osborn, H. F., “ Faunal Relations of Europe and America,” p. 58. 
t lloworth, H. H., “The Mammoth and the Drift.” 
X Tcherski, J. D., “ Das Janaland,” p. 474. 
