Animals Before 3 fan 



mammals would be found to be cliaracterized 

 by having five-toed, plantigrade feet, and tuber- 

 cular teeth. No such animal was known at tlie 

 time (1874), but in 1880 Dr. Wort man obtained 

 a practically complete skeleton of Phenacodus, 

 nearly at the close of a collecting season that 

 up to that time had yielded almost nothing. 

 And this well illustrates the uncertainties at- 

 tending the collection of fossils. 



In the fore foot of Phenacodus we get the 

 first suggestion of a hand, though it be a sug- 

 gestion merely. The articulations of the inner- 

 most finger are such that it looks inward, and 

 while it had no such power of grasping as 

 exists in the hand of man, or even a monkey, 

 yet it seems to have been Nature's first attempt 

 at a hand. So Professor Cope argues that we 

 must look to the early members of the group 

 to which Phenacodus belongs for the ancestors 

 of the lemurs, while from these have come the 

 higher monkeys. 



The place of the carnivores was at this time 

 held by animals similar in habits, though differ- 

 ent in the details of their teeth and skeletons, 



224 



