Distribution 



THE UNGULATES, OR HOOFED MAMMALS 



The range of the musk ox in Arctic America is limited to the south- 

 ward by the sixtieth degree of latitude, but extends northward to the 

 eighty-third degree in Grinnell Land. It abounds on both the east and west coasts 

 of Greenland, and in Arctic America its range is bounded to the eastward by the 

 Mackenzie river, flowing from the Great Slave Lake in about longitude 67 30', 

 while westward it extends nearly to the Pacific. In former years the range of 

 the animal reached considerably farther south, it having been found, in the year 

 1770, near Fort Churchill, on the west coast of Hudson's Bay, in latitude 58 

 44'. In prehistoric or Pleistocene time the musk ox also ranged to the north- 



THE MUSK ox. 

 (One-fifteenth natural size.) 



west into Alaska, its fossilized remains having been found in the frozen soil 

 of Kotzebue sound in Behring Strait, and also in the upper part of the Por- 

 cupine river in Canada. At a still earlier period probably when the whole 

 of North America was far colder than at present the musk ox ranged as 

 far south as Kansas and Kentucky, where its remains have been found between 

 the thirty-fifth and fortieth parallels of latitude. The remains from these local- 

 ities have, however, been regarded as indicating an extinct species. Passing 

 eastward from Alaska across Behring Strait into Asia, musk ox bones are found in 

 the frozen soil of Siberia, as far eastward as the Obi river. The animal doubtless 



