xxviii. 8 AARDVARKS 705 



Orycteropus occurs as fossils back to the Miocene. Its earlier history 

 is unknown, but similar teeth have been reported from the Eocene, 

 and many features of the skeleton are strikingly like those of condy- 

 larths. The animal obviously retains many characters that were 

 present in the earliest eutherians, the fact that it is placed by some as 

 an edentate or insectivore and by others close to the base of the un- 

 gulate stock suggests that it has diverged relatively little from the 

 ancestor of all eutherians. 



