IV. CHIM/EROIDS IN THE PROBLEM OF VERTEBRATE DESCENT. 



On the basis of the foregoing discussion we may finally consider the critical 

 question whether Chimseroids are to be regarded "as the most primitive verte- 

 brates, or more precisely as the least modified descendants of the ancestral cranium- 

 and jaw-bearing vertebrate?" Are they, in other words, to be looked upon as 

 more primitive than sharks and as "representing a lower plane in piscine evolu- 

 tion 1 ' ? These questions have been touched upon, more or less distinctly, throughout 

 the present paper and the conclusion has been already indicated. And I think we 

 may now state confidently that, from the evidence of embryology and paleontology, 

 Chimseroids represent not the ancestral vertebrate, but rather a highly modified 

 group descended from selachian ancestors. At the present time the evidence may 

 be summarized upon which this induction is based. 



PALEONTOLOGICAL EVIDENCE THAT CH1M/EROIDS ARE DERIVED FROM SELACHIAN 



ANCESTORS. 



(a) Their later origin: 



The earliest genera of whose Chimaeroid nature there can be no doubt do not 

 appear before the lower Jurassic, and from this horizon have been described but 

 two genera. Sharks, on the other hand, appear in ages remotely earlier, and they 

 are then represented by several orders, many genera, and very many species. 

 Thus, in the Palaeozoic alone, we may enumerate at least fifteen genera and forty 

 species whose shark-like anatomical features are definitely known, and we may 

 reject altogether the testimony of the numberless selachian "species" of spines and 

 teeth. Into this limbo of indeterminata may provisionally be cast Ptyctodonts, 

 together with Cochliodonts, Deltodonts, and similar forms. And we may in like 

 manner regard the Permian Menaspis as doubtful. But even if we grant that all 

 Ptyctodonts are Chimseroid, we have still the testimony that the sharks were 

 in earlier periods overwhelmingly more numerous and more diversified. And we 

 have equally to admit that, even at that early period, many sharks, from horizon 

 to horizon, modify the character of their cuspid teeth in the direction of tritoral 

 plates. In short, admitting the evidence of dentition, one may state conservatively, 

 that even in their epoch Ptyctodontids stood to the sharks, both in number and 

 in variety, only as one to one hundred. And from this testimony alone we can 

 almost reject the thesis that Chimaeroids were ancestral sharks. Unfavorable to 

 the latter view, moreover, is the fact that the culmination of the Chimaeroid line, 

 i. e., in genera and species, did not occur before the Cretaceous, while that of 

 sharks antedated the Permian. 



