xii LIFE OF TERTIARY PERIOD 233 



prehistoric man, either upon the tusks themselves or upon 

 the flat portions of the horns of reindeer which he hunted 

 for food. 



Tertiary Mammals of South America and Australia 



No part of the world has so many distinct groups of 

 Mammalia peculiar to it as South America, among which the 

 most remarkable are the sloths and the armadillos ; and all 

 of them are found fossil in the middle or late Tertiary or 

 the Pleistocene, from Brazil to Patagonia, and are often 

 represented by strange forms of gigantic size. Some account 

 of these will now be given. Darwin was one of the first 

 collectors of these fossils on his voyage in the Beagle^ 

 and during the last twenty or thirty years numerous 

 travellers and residents, especially in Argentina, have more 

 thoroughly explored the deposits of the pampas of various 

 ages. Their great richness and importance may be indicated 

 by the following enumeration of the chief orders of Mammalia 

 represented in them. 



Of the Primates (or monkeys), all the remains are of 

 the peculiar American families Cebidae and Hapalidae, with 

 one extinct genus of the former. Bats (the order Chiroptera) 

 are abundant, with several peculiar genera. The Insectivora 

 are very rare in South America, but a fossil has been found 

 supposed to belong to the peculiar West Indian family 

 Solenodontidae. The Carnivora are chiefly represented by 

 fossils of the American family Procyonidae (comprising the 

 racoons and coati-mundis), of which several extinct genera 

 have been obtained. The hoofed animals (Ungulata), which, 

 from their great abundance in a living state in every part of 

 the world, and their habit of living together in great herds 

 often of many thousands, have been most frequently preserved 

 in a fossil state, are here represented not only by all the 

 chief forms that still inhabit the country, but also by some 

 which are now only found in other continents, as well as by 

 many which are altogether extinct. Among the former the 

 most interesting are true horses of the genus Equus, as well 

 as two peculiar genera of ancestral Equidae, distinct from 

 those so abundant in North America. There are also 

 several ancestral forms of the Llama tribe, one of which, 



