22 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



tain marked ancestral forms. North Africa, on the other 

 hand, has been since PHocene time in close connection with 

 Europe and Asia and dominated by the same fauna. The 

 Pliocene fauna of North Africa was practically the same as 

 that occurring contemporaneously in southern Europe and 

 Asia. The same fauna exists in the game fields of East and 

 South Africa to-day. Before the Pleistocene dawned in Eu- 

 rope the great bulk of the antelopes and carnivores of Afri- 

 can affinities had disappeared and were replaced by a fauna 

 similar to that which exists there to-day. The deer, sheep, 

 ibex, bear, and boars which characterized this fauna en- 

 tered North Africa by way of the land connections at Suez 

 and Gibraltar, but were not able to cross the Sahara Desert 

 into tropical Africa. Africa in Miocene * time was cut off 

 as a continent from Europe, but unfortunately we have only 

 a few beds in the Fayum referable to this age. They con- 

 tain only primitive proboscidians and rhinoceroses. In 

 addition to this evidence we have the Miocene Dinotherium 

 from the Victoria Nyanza. What evidence we have would 

 lead us to assume that the antelopes had not yet reached 

 Africa in Miocene time. Eurasia, however, in the Miocene 

 reached its climax of antelope forms, supporting eleven 

 genera, four of which still survive in Africa. During the 

 Oligocene and Miocene of Eurasia there appeared many 

 new genera either identical with or closely allied to those 

 found to-day in Africa. Such genera are represented by 

 the aardvark, the scaly ant-eater, the black rhinoceros, the 

 chevrotain, the springbuck, the gazelle, the sable or roan 

 antelope, the oryx, the koodoo, the bushbuck, the eland, the 



* Mathew, "Outlines of the Continents in Tertiary Time," Bull. Am. Mus. 

 N. H., XXII, p. 353, connects Africa during the Miocene with Eurasia; but the 

 distribution of antelopes during that time does not support such a connection. 



