CHAPTER XII 



Order : UNGULATA. HOOFED MAMMALS : ELE- 

 PHANTS, RHINOCEROSES, AND HORSES 



The absence of primitive types of Ungulates from the deposits 

 -of the early Eocene in Europe, perhaps also in Asia, causes 

 Professor H. F. Osborn ^ to argue that the Ungulates originated 

 in North America together with the ancestors of the Edentates, 

 and possibly those of the Rodents and Primates. But a good 

 many primitive types of Ungulates reached the British Islands, 

 perhaps as early as the time in which these islands were rather a 

 ■dependency of North America than a peninsula of Europe ; and 

 during the succeeding periods, commencing from the connection 

 of the British plateau with the European Continent down to the 

 invasion of these countries by devastating man, hoofed animals 

 of large size and strange developments flourished in England 

 and Scotland, and to a lesser degree in Ireland. 



The earliest forms of Ungulates probably reached these islands 

 directly from America in the opening part of the Tertiary Epoch. 

 Later on the route was reversed : they travelled hither from Asia 

 and Africa through France and Belgium. Towards the end of 

 the Pleistocene period, the revived connection with Arctic America 

 by way of Iceland, Greenland, and the ice floes of the Glacial 

 ages, may have brought us one or two circumpolar types ; but 

 even these, too, more probably came here from Siberia through 

 Central Europe. 



^ President of the New York Academy of Sciences ; pupil, and in many 

 respects successor, of the great American palaeontologist, Cope. 



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