THE AMERICAN^ BISOKS 



35 



mammalia^ but it may have survived to a comparatively recent date. There 

 is nothing to indicate whether it was or was not contemporaneous with the 

 larger extinct bison, except that the remains of both species occur with those 

 of the same species of other extinct mammals. Judging by the same evi- 

 dencCj both may also have been contemporaneous with the Bison prisciis of 



r 



the Old World. 



5. 



Relation of the Existin^g 



OF 



TO TnE 



ExTiKCT Species 



European writers seem to have fallen into rather confused and erroneous 

 notions respecting the afl&nities of the different forms of living and extinct 

 bisons. By the earlier writers all the remains of extinct bisons were re- 

 ferred to the aurochs, which was considered as the modern degenerate race 

 of the older form. Later the extinct bisons were viewed as a species dis- 

 tinct from the living, but all of the extinct ones were referred to the 

 same species. Quite recently Evitimeyer, while maintaining this view re- 

 specting the fossil forms,* has considered the Bison americaniis as the older 

 form, through which Bison bonasiis has passed in reaching its present estate. 

 This conclusion, based on developmental features of the teeth and skull, has 

 been accepted by Brandt and other writei^s on the subject, contrary, it 



appears to me, to the teaching of general facts. 



g has even car- 



ried his generalization to the absurd extreme of referring all the forms of 

 Bison to the Bos bonasiis of Linne ! 



The evidence bearing upon the question of the actual geological sequence 

 of the different extinct forms is by no means decisive or satisfactory. If we 

 regard, however, the gigantic B, Mifrons^ wdth its immense horns spreading 



ten to twelve feet, as the older type, passing into, on the one hand, the 



Bison prisciis of the Old World, and on the other, into the Bison antiqims of 

 the New World, the former giving origin to the existing Bison honasns and 

 the latter to the existing Bison awtericanus^ we have what seems to be a 

 natural transition throughout the series. Both in the Old World and the 

 New, the older form is larger than the more recent, with disproportionately 



* Strangely and against all analogy, Riltimcyer regards the small Bison antiquus of Leidy as tlie raale 

 and the gigantic Bison latifrons as the female, of one and the same species, and both as identical with the 



Old World extinct bison. 



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 ^ 



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