204 LAND MAMMALS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE 



in the North America of to-day were already here in the 

 Pleistocene, minks, weasels, martens, skunks, otters, badgers, 

 wolverenes, raccoons, foxes, wolves, coyotes, pumas, etc., etc., 

 but there were several others which are either now extinct or no 

 longer to be found in this continent. Of the extinct types much 

 the most striking were the several species of fsabre-tooth tigers 

 {■\Smilodon, see Frontispiece) which have been found in the 

 greater part of the United States and no doubt ranged over the 

 whole. These were massive, short-tailed and rather short- 

 legged, but very muscular and powerful, cat-hke animals, in 

 which the upper canine teeth were converted into great, 

 recurved, scimitar-like tusks. These large beasts of prey, 

 which about equalled the Leopard in height, but were far 

 heavier, belonged to a group which, at one time or another, 

 spread over nearly the whole world and persisted much later 

 and attained a larger size and higher development in the 

 western hemisphere than in the eastern. They had a very 

 long American ancestry, from the lower Oligocene to the end 

 of the Pleistocene, but the place of their origin is still un- 

 known. In addition to the pumas and lynxes, there were 

 some very large true felines {Felis ^atrox and F .^imperialis) , 

 which closely resembled the Lion {F. leo) in size, appearance 

 and structure, and have been found in California and the 

 Mississippi Valley ; probably these great cats were immigrants, 

 but they may represent a native development of Miocene and 

 Phocene stock ; the history of the family is too imperfect for a 

 decision of this question. 



Besides coyotes and wolves which are indistinguishable 

 from existing species, there were some very large wolves, now 

 extinct, of which the commonest and most widely distributed 

 was Canis ^dirus (also called C .findianensis) so abundant in 

 the asphalts of southern California. Bears were not so com- 

 mon in the middle Pleistocene and have not been found in the 

 older part of that epoch, though they probably had already 

 reached North America from the Old World, where they orig- 



