NEW SCIENCE OF PALEONTOLOGY 



larger than the existing elephants, and had tusks eleven 

 feet in length. It was mounted and described by Dr. 

 John C. Warren, of Boston, and has been famous for 

 half a century as the "Warren mastodon." 



But to the student of racial development as recorded 

 by the fossils all these sporadic finds have but inciden- 

 tal interest as compared with the rich Western fossil- 

 beds to which we have already referred. From records 

 here unearthed, the racial evolution of many mammals 

 has in the past few years been made out in greater or 

 less detail. Professor Cope has traced the ancestry of 

 the camels (which, like the rhinoceroses, hippopotami, 

 and sundry other forms now spoken of as " Old World," 

 seem to have had their origin here) with much com- 

 pleteness. 



A lemuroid form of mammal, believed to be of the 

 type from which man has descended, has also been 

 found in these beds. It is thought that the descend- 

 ants of this creature, and of the other "Old- World" 

 forms above referred to, found their way to Asia, prob- 

 ably, as suggested by Professor Marsh, across a bridge 

 at Bering Strait, to continue their evolution on the 

 other hemisphere, becoming extinct in the land of their 

 nativity. The ape-man fossil found in the tertiary 

 strata of the island of Java in 1891 by the Dutch 

 surgeon Dr. Eugene Dubois, and named Pithecanthro- 

 pus erectus, may have been a direct descendant of the 

 American tribe of primitive lemurs, though this is only 

 a conjecture. 



Not all the strange beasts which have left their re- 

 mains in our "bad lands" are represented by living de- 

 scendants. The titanotheres, or brontotheridae, for ex- 



"3 



