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. r.KIMI-'l AILI.D 1'OKCUJ'INK 



that less ancient connection with North America which united 

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

 many further problems in zoographical distribution postulate 

 this Kocenc 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 Kuropc. 



The only octodont found in West (as well as Kast) Africa 

 'he well-known ground pig or ground rat (T'hrynomys 



698 



