Liberia <^ 



There are not a few features in the West African fauna which 

 suggest a land connection with Brazil across the Atlantic in 

 the late Secondary and early Tertiary times, but it is not 

 altogether necessary to invoke this change in the bed of the 

 Atlantic to account for the presence of two octodonts in Tropical 

 Africa, since besides the North African Ctenodactylus, which 

 belongs to an allied family, there are the fossil remains of an 

 octodont in Sicily. This might lead us up through Europe to 



269. UKUSH-TAILIiD PORCUPINE 



that less ancient connection with North America which united 

 the Old and the New Worlds. On the other hand, a good 

 many further problems in zoographical distribution postulate 

 this Eocene connection between West Africa and Brazil, and 

 if in early Tertiary times two or more genera of octodont 

 rodents entered West Africa, they might well have pushed 

 their way northwards as far as Southern Europe. 



The only octodont found in IVest (as well as East) Africa 

 is the well-known ground pig or ground rat (I'hrynomys 



698 



