DISTRIBUTION OF MAMMALS 173 



Java is the only island in the group in which mammalian 

 fossils have been found. Even those are relatively recent fossils 

 of the Ice Age or Pleistocene. The most interesting discoveries 

 in those deposits have been the remains of fossil man (Pithecan- 

 thropus), a man with many ape-like features, famed as the 

 "missing link" between man and the ape. Actually this creature 

 was much more human than is commonly supposed. Other rela- 

 tively enormous forms closely related to Pithecanthropus, found 

 in the Javan deposits, had teeth and jaws much larger than the 

 gorillas. 



There, too, were found remains of hyenas and bones of an 

 extinct species of hippopotamus ; hyenas are no longer found 

 in the Malay Subregion and the hippo today occurs only in 

 Africa. A distinct species of wild ox, related to the banting, a 

 saber-toothed tiger, a mastodon, and primitive kinds of ele- 

 phants called stegodonts, as well as several animals long thought 

 to be giraffes but actually related to cattle, formerly lived in 

 Java. The Eld deer or thamin, now found no nearer than 

 Burma and Indo-China, lived in Java until a few thousand 

 years ago. 



The Australo-Oriental Subregion or Wallacea is here con- 

 sidered to include Celebes, the Lesser Sunda Islands from Lom- 

 bok to Timor, and the Moluccas. This is the zone of overlap 

 of Oriental and Australian mammals, in which the former greatly 

 predominate. 



Celebes, much the largest land mass in the Australo-Oriental 

 Subregion, has a fauna largely Oriental in origin. This includes 

 the anoa or pygmy buffalo, wild pigs, the babirusa, sambar deer, 

 shrews, two distinctive macaques, the tarsier, several extraor- 

 dinary rats, a long-nosed ground squirrel, civets and palm civets. 

 The civets and sambar may have reached Celebes by human 

 agency, and one of the shrews, the house musk shrew, was per- 

 haps transported in canoes like house mice and rats. Deer and 

 pigs are good swimmers ; they may sometimes have advanced 

 naturally through the chain of the Lesser Sunda Islands. The 



