396 MAMMALIA. 



of Buenos Aires, is larger than the extinct European cave bear; 

 and its humerus is remarkable as exhibiting an entepicondylar 

 foramen. A nearly similar skull, named A. simum, is also 

 known from a cavern in Shasta County, California. 



Nothing is known of the ancestors of the raccoons and their 

 allies, or Procyonidae, of America. The same remark applies 

 to the northern Indian representative of the family, Aelurus. 

 Detached teeth, however, identical with those of the latter 

 animal occur in the Red Crag (Lower Pliocene) of Suffolk (A. 

 anglicus) ; its former geographical range must thus have been 

 very extensive in the Old World. 



The weasels, badgers, and otters, or Mustelidae, date back 

 to the Upper Eocene in Europe, and since the early part of the 

 Pliocene period they have been abundant and widely distri- 

 buted in the northern hemisphere. Immediately before the 

 Pleistocene many typical forms also reached South America. 

 Stenoplesictis and Palceoprionodon are generalized weasels from 

 the Upper Eocene Phosphorites of Quercy, France; and Mustela 

 itself seems to date back to the Middle Miocene in Europe, to 

 the Upper Miocene (Loup Fork Formation) in North America, 

 and to the Lower Pliocene in India. The otter (Lutra) is an 

 equally ancient form in Europe and North America, and 

 appears also in the Lower Pliocene of India. Potamotherium, 

 from the Lower Miocene of France and Germany, connects 

 the otters with the Viverridse so far as the characters of its 

 brain and teeth are concerned. The true badgers (Meles) 

 seem to be represented by fragments in the Lower Pliocene of 

 Maragha, Persia, but are not known before the Pleistocene in 

 Europe, when the glutton (Gulo) also appears and 'exhibits a 

 much wider range in Europe than at the present day. Charac- 

 teristic remains of the glutton have been found in several of 

 the English and Welsh cavern deposits, and one fragment of 

 mandible is recorded from the Cromer Forest Bed ; but the 

 animal seems to have become extinct in Britain in prehistoric 

 times. 



The civets, ichneumons, and their allies, or Viverridae, 

 seem to have been always small animals confined to the Old 

 World. They are very generalized Carnivora, and the genus 



