Page Four 



EVOLUTION 



January, 1938 



seen herds of horses, not very different from the present 

 wild horses of Asia, snorting stalhons guarding their 

 seragUos of mares. Crouching in wait for the colts and 

 strays lay great lions, larger than those of Africa. Bands 

 of huge-headed, uncouth wolves roamed through the coun- 

 try following herds of bison similar to those found on the 

 plains in the frontier days. 



In the thickets herds of elephants of mammoth size 

 rested during the heat of the day and with them foraged 

 clumsy coarse-haired beasts of slow movement and still 

 slower wit — beasts with huge claws on the front feet 

 which they doubled under them as they lumbered along 

 — these were the ground sloths, related distantly to the 

 smaller tree-sloths and ant-eaters of South America today. 

 Stalking through the cypress thickets were solitary, tiger- 

 like cats with huge teeth, like swords, in the fronts of 

 their mouths. They killed and ate the sloths and smaller 

 elephants — pouncing upon them with great force and 

 driving their terrible sabre-like teeth through the thick 

 hides — ripping gashes and cutting across exposed vessels. 

 The remains of the carcasses were gnawed by the wolves 

 and plucked to bits by the giant vultures — much larger 

 than the California Condor. Ungainly camels, droves ot 

 grunting peccaries, an occasional blundering tapir, huge 

 bears, delicate antelopes and deer, mountain lions, coyotes, 

 gophers, bob-cats, badgers, skunks, birds, toads, turtles 

 and all the lesser fry of the present day completed this 

 picture of wilderness life as it was lived one hundred 

 thousand years ago in the valleys of California. 



Two Million Years Ago 



Proceed backward two million years or so and note the 

 differences in the life of California at that time. Here 

 again are herds of horses — a little smaller — a little stronger 

 than those of today. The elephants, mostly of the Mas- 

 todon group, are shorter-legged, with four tusks instead 

 of two, and with longer lower jaws, long low heads, simple 

 teeth and possibly shorter trunks. The ground sloths are 

 just beginning to straggle in from South America, along 

 with them are curious animals like giant turtles or arma- 

 dillos with a dome-like crust of bony scales all over the 

 back and tiny little feet, tail and head peeping out from 

 under this big shell — there are the glyptodonts — another 

 South American group that visited us for a time. The 

 camels now include some graceful gazelle-like forms and 

 some with spindling legs and necks like a giraffe. 



There are plenty of rhinoceroses and these become ex- 

 tinct in North America after this time. The bison have 

 not yet appeared — they will come in later from Asia. Tlie 

 wolves look and act like hyenas with bone crunching teeth 

 and short thick jaws. There are no giant sabre-toothed 

 cats or lions in the Pliocene — their place is taken by a 

 smaller kind of sabre-toothed cat about the size of our 

 mountain lion and bearing more delicate sabres than the 

 Pleistocene form. The antelopes are the predecessors ot 

 our plain antelope. There are curious little deer with 

 flattened antlers in this California of two million years ago. 



Thirty to forty million years ago the animals of Cali- 

 fornia were still more different from their successors ot 

 today. At this time we find but meagre faunas which 

 must be compared with the well known fossils of the plains 

 and rockies to make them understandable. The horses were 

 about the size of sheep, with three toes on each foot, and 

 with teeth fitted only for browsing, not for chewing hard 

 grasses. The rhinoceroses were more like the honses than 

 any rhinos of today. Some of them were rapid runners, 

 some were stodgy marsh living types. The dog and cat- 



like forms were small-brained, less intelligent, slinking, 

 sneaking forms without the highly developed teeth of 

 later kinds. Tliere was a group of giant animals called 

 titanotheres related to the horses and rhinos but with a 

 double forked horn rising from the end of the nose. These 

 powerful creatures, in bulk much larger than the present 

 rhinos and apparently well able to take care of themselves, 

 became suddenly extinct for some unknown reason. There 

 were giant lump-jawed pigs and curious big-jowled creo- 

 donts, (primitive browsing animals, piglike in habits, and 

 distantly related to the pigs and deer). The elephants had 

 simple teeth, long jaws, minute tusks and probably very 

 short trunks — they were much smaller than the modern 

 elephants. 



When Waters Covered the Land 



During most of the period before the last forty million 

 years the parts of California west of the present Sierra 

 Nevada were covered by the sea. In this ocean lived in 

 very early times, reptiles related to the lizards and crocodiles, 

 fishlike in form with fins and flippers, never coming out on 

 land, even to bear their young. 



These big animals also perished — as the whales are des- 

 tined to do, perhaps in the near future, under the inroads 

 of man. 



While the great fish-lizards churned through the seas and 

 the flying bat-like reptiles soared above, the land was in- 

 habited by a strange host of creeping, ambling and rapid 

 running cold-blooded animals of which the dinosaurs were 

 the most conspicuous. At this time the most obscure 

 forms were tiny little warm-blooded hairy mammals related 

 to our opossums, moles and shrews. 



The close of the age of reptiles witnessed the destruction 

 of a world of life that had been slowly built up during 

 some 300 million years and was the signal for the develop- 

 ment of the modern types of birds and mammals that live 

 about us today. Some of these in turn are rapidly passing 

 out of the picture. The grizzly bear is now extinct in 

 California, the giant condor is nearly so, as well as the 

 California grey whale, and the Roosevelt elk. Even in 

 Africa the great herds are vanishing before the onslaught 

 of the frontiersman — just as the bison did in America. 

 The world is due for constant changes. Change is the 

 order of the day but man should have some control over 

 his destiny if he will but use the intelligence which he 

 may bring to bear upon the complex problems of his 

 social scheme. 



• 

 A PEEP AHEAD 



The next issue of EVOLUTION will bring you "The 

 Evolution of The Dog" by Leon F. Whitney; "The Dy- 

 namic View of Nature" by Alexander Goldenweiser ; 

 "Darwin and Evolution" by Wyman R. Green; "The X-Ray 

 and Evolution" by C. P. Haskins; and other articles dealing 

 with current discoveries regarding the process of evolution. 



MAKE 1938 AN EVOLUTION YEAR 



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