224 LAND MAMMALS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE 



seems to be utterly exotic to North America, that of the rhinoc- 

 eroses, was present, and of these there were three or four series, 

 mostly without horns, or with a very small horn on the tip 

 of the snout. The extremely aberrant perissodactyls (fAncylo- 

 poda), in which the hoofs were converted into great claws, 

 perhaps persisted, but the evidence is not conclusive. 



The Artiodactyla were, for the most part, totally different 

 from those of modern times, though several forms were an- 

 cestral to some now living. Peccaries more primitive than 

 the living genus were the only representatives of the swine- 

 like suborder ; ancestral camels and llamas were among the 

 commonest of the hoofed animals and an extinct phylum, that 

 of the t" giraffe-camels" {\ Alticamelus) continued over from 

 the Miocene. The giraffe-camels are so called, not because 

 of any actual relationships with the giraffes, but on account of 

 certain likenesses in the proportions of the animals compared. 

 '\ Alticamelus was a very large, camel-like creature, with remark- 

 ably elongate neck and limbs and comparatively small head, 

 which no doubt resembled the giraffes in browsing upon trees 

 which were above the reach of the ordinary camels and llamas 

 of the time. It was the terminal member of a series, or phylum, 

 which branched off from the main stock in Oligocene times and 

 pursued a course of development which was independent of 

 the principal series, but curiously parallel with it. 



The deer of the lower Pliocene were little, graceful creatures 

 {'fBlastomeryx) which had no antlers, but the males were armed 

 with sabre-like upper canine tusks, so that they must have 

 resembled the Musk-Deer of Tibet, but were smaller and more 

 slender. The remarkable group of f" deer-antelopes," now 

 extinct, was represented by \Merycodus, a dainty little creature, 

 less than two feet high at the shoulder, which had the antlers 

 and general appearance of a small deer, but the high-crowned 

 grinding teeth which most antelopes have. True antelopes 

 of two different lines were also present, though they are as yet 

 known from little more than the bony horn-cores ; of these. 



