372 



MAMMALIA. 



attain their maximum development at the present day; the 

 existing forms being so numerous and so extraordinarily varied 

 that it is difficult to classify them. They range over the 

 greater part of Africa, Asia, and Europe, and also over the 

 Arctic and northern temperate regions of America; but it is 

 interesting to note that they do not appear to have reached 

 the New World until the close of the Pliocene period. 



The earliest known Bovida? are small gazelle-like animals 

 represented by fragments from the Middle or Upper Miocene 



FIG. 211. 



Palceoreas linderniayeri ; skull, left lateral aspect, two-fifths nat. size. L. 

 Pliocene ; Pikermi, Greece. (After Gaudry.) 



of France (Protragoceras chantrei), and from the Lower Pliocene 

 of France, England (Gazella anglica, Coralline Crag), Austria, 

 Italy, Greece, the Isle of Samos, Maragha in Persia, and the 

 Siwalik Hills in India. In the Lower Pliocene both of Europe 

 and Asia there are also remains of comparatively large ante- 

 lopes, some (as Palceoreas, fig. 211, from Pikermi and Tuscany) 

 with spirally-twisted horns. In the Pleistocene period the 

 Saiga Antelope (Saiga tatarica), now living on the Siberian 



