399 



(iitiflinal JLtiti^lit^^ 



XXXIV. — On the Dentition op Ehinoceeos megaehii^us.- 

 By W. Boyd Davvkins, M.A. Oxon., Y.G.S. 



Contents : 



§ 1. TiCHORHINE, LePTOEIIINE, AND A. UpPER 



Megarhine Species. 

 § 2. Enamel Structure. 

 § 3. Milk Dentition op R. Mega- 

 rhinus. 

 a. Upper Milk Molars. 

 B. Lower INIilk Molars. 

 § 4. Permanent Dentition of R. 

 Megarhinns. 



B. Lower. 



§ 5. Table or Measurements of 

 Milk and Permanent Teeth. 



§ 6. Comparison between the Me- 

 garhine AND the recent SpE- 



ciEs OF Rhinoceros. 



§ 1. TlCHORINE, LEPTOIiHINE and MEGAEHINE SPECIES. 



Tlie remains of the fossil Eliinoceros are perhaps more widely 

 spread throughout Europe and Asia than those of any other fossil 

 quadruped, except the Mammoth. Erom the shores of Siberia in 

 latitude 72°* southwards, as far as the Sivalik Hills,f they are found 

 in greater or less abundance : from east to west the genus ranges 

 from the banks of the Lena to the Straits of Gibraltar. Its range 

 also in time is very extended — from the Miocene as far down as the 

 later division of the Pleistocene, when the low-level gravels and 

 brick-earths were being deposited in Britain. 



Passing over the numerous continental and confining our- 

 selves to the British Pleistocene species of the bone-caverns and 

 river-deposits, we find evidence of the presence of three distinct 



* Probably also in the higher northern latitudes of the islands of New Siberia, 

 and the Liiehow gi'oup, the remains of the tichorhine rhinoceros are to be found in 

 the vast accumulation of organic remains, of which — as the energetic Russian 

 explorer Sannikow writes — the mliole soil of the first of the Liiehow Islands appears 

 to consist. The occurrence of large quantities of the bones and skulls of oxen, 

 buftaloes, horses, and sheep, associated with the Mammoth on the hills of the 

 interior of New Siberia (lat. 75-6,) led him to infer that at the time when the island 

 supported such vast herds of these animals, the climate must have been much milder 

 than at present, when the icy Avilderness produces nothing that could afford them 

 nourishment.— See Wrangel's Siberia and Polar Sea, 1840. Edit. Major Sabine, 

 Introduction. 



t Falconer and Cautlcy's Fauna Autiqua Sivalensis. 



