FOSSIL APES 29 



North America, and occasionally in Europe, the apes and 

 man are descended on the one side, and on the other the un- 

 gulata (hoofed animals) and the carnivora. This view is 

 shared by Topinard. 



Klaatsch also denies any special importance to the anthro- 

 poids among man's progenitors, but seeks his origin in still 

 earlier forms of the mammalia. He assigns great importance 

 to the teeth. Taking the highest figures that have been 

 obtained from the observation of anomalous cases of every 

 kind of human being, and arranging them synthetically, he 

 arrives at a set of teeth corresponding not to that of the apes, 

 but to that of much earlier eocene mammals. Similarly, the 

 protuberances of the molar teeth in man correspond to the 

 same in groups of eocene mammals. Klaatsch further points 

 out that the opposable thumb is not peculiar to man and the 

 apes but was present in the parent form of all mammals ; nor 

 did the special development of the great toe originate with the 

 apes, it being found in the prehensile foot of certain half- 

 apes. In the opinion of Klaatsch the great toe acquired its 

 present importance through man's ancestors having climbed 

 very thick-stemmed trees requiring a firm side pressure of the 

 prehensile foot against the trunk. The theory that several 

 lower animal forms have served as the fundamental form of 

 man is unconditionally rejected by Klaatsch, for, he argues, 

 only to adduce two proofs, it is inconceivable that the redness 

 of the lips and the presence of hair in the armpits, both dis- 

 tinctive characters of man, should have been repeatedly de- 

 veloped from different animal ancestors. 



Fossil Apes. 



Up to the present the fossil remains of apes that have been 

 discovered are not abundant, although of extreme interest, 

 especially to those naturalists who base the origin of man on 

 the anthropoids of the Tertiary Period. Fossil remains of 

 apes have been discovered from the year 1836, and have been 

 described by the most experienced palaeontologists ; they were 

 formerly not recognised as such and were not admitted by 

 Cuvier to the end of his life. Fossil apes and semi-apes have 

 been found more abundantly during the last decades of the 



