SUCCESSIVE MAMMALIAN FAUNAS 



223 



resemblance ; these were very large members of the dog family 

 (Canidse), now extinct. Mustelines, large and small, are 

 found, and possibly some bears had already made their way 

 from the Old World, but this is still uncertain. fSabre-tooth 

 tigers and true cats, some as large as lions and one species 

 fairly gigantic, were likewise characteristic of the time. There 



Fig. 123. — fHorned Gopher (fEpigaulus hatcheri), lower Pliocene, Nebraska. 

 Restored from a skeleton in the U.S. National Museum. 



was a great wealth of horses, though the modern genus Equus 

 was not among them ; all the genera are now extinct and all 

 were three-toed. Several distinct phyla were represented, 

 some progressive and advancing toward the modern forms, 

 others conservative and stationary. Browsing horses with 

 low-crowned teeth, grazing horses with prismatic, cement - 

 covered teeth, heavier and lighter, larger and smaller, must 

 have covered the plains and thronged the woods. Ancestral 

 tapirs were present, though far less common. A family which 



