THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



in those days of the latter part of the Primary 

 period, but that this group combined in the germ 

 amphibians, reptiles and mammals, just as we 

 saw at a later stage that the oldest mammals of 

 the Tertiary period took their departure from a 

 mixed group which contained the possibility of 

 evolution into Carnivora, ruminants, rodents and 

 prosimiae. 



The members of this mixed group may have 

 resembled the present-day amphibian newts, so 

 far as the naked skin full of glands and sense 

 organs was concerned, and they may have had 

 p6ints of contact with them also as regards their 

 mode of living and otherwise. Their lower jaw 

 may have been so constructed that it might de- 

 velop in the style of a genuine reptile as well as 

 the other extreme of the genuine mammal, and 

 the remainder of its bony structure may for 

 many ages have resembled the living Hatteria, 

 while other characteristics may have recalled the 

 duckbill. Surely, their feet had five regular toes, 

 one of them probably being a flexible thumb, in 

 other words, the basis of the later "hand." The 

 teeth of this group must have pointed in the di- 

 rection of mammals. 



This mixed group branched off into the various 

 side lines which we have already observed, each 



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