^^^^ ZOOGENESIS T"''^ 



plateau-loving and forest-loving types; in the forests 

 remain all the backw^ard conservative types; on the 

 plateaus and uplands are found the alert, progressive, 

 forward-looking types, including all the long-hind- 

 limbed bipedal [tw^o legged] animals adapted to rapid 

 progression in an open or partly forested country. 

 It is no exaggeration to say that at the daw^n of 

 Oligocene time all the plateau-loving animals are 

 distinctly modernized both in habits and in bodily 

 proportions." 



Professor Osborn asks, "Is it likely that the Pri- 

 mates alone escaped this divorce betv^een backw^ard, 

 forest-loving life and forv^ard, plateau, savanna and 

 upland life, especially as Eocene forest areas in every 

 continent began to contract and upland open plains 

 began to expand?" 



It is difficult to see how anyone can take exception 

 to this reasoning. There are no grounds for assum- 

 ing that man offered an exception to the general truths 

 which we learn through the study of the fossil history 

 of the mammals as a whole. The conclusion that 

 man was man as early as the Eocene — as early as the 

 time of the little Eolnppus — has far more in its favor 

 than the assumption that man is directly connected 

 with the modern apes. 



Now Eohippus was a creature which was very dif- 

 ferent from the modern horses, or the donkeys, or the 

 zebras. And besides, all of the Eocene representa- 

 tives of the present mammals were very different from 

 the present, or the Pleistocene types. So if the 

 human line was distinct in Eocene time it necessarily 



[2-2-9] 



