44 



GUIDE TO THE FOSSIL 3IAMMALS AND BIRDS. 



Pier-case 

 18. 



Pier-case 

 19. 



Pier-case 

 17. 



Pier-case 

 16. 



lltord, Essex, is placed with other British specimens in Pier- 

 case 18. The animal seems to have become extinct in the 

 ]>riti.sh Isles long before the dawn of history, and it was 

 succeeded by the imported Celtic short-horn {Bos longifrons), 

 of which numerons remains are shown in Pier-case 19. The 

 latter species is supposed to be the ancestor of the existing 

 small Welsh and Scottish cattle. 



Skulls of primitive cattle collected cliietly l)y Colonel 

 Sir Proby T. Cautley in the Lower Pliocene of the Siwalik 

 Hills, India, are exhibited in Pier-case 17. The females of 

 some species seem to have been hornless. Skulls of Bnhalvs 

 from the Pleistocene of the Narbada Valley, India, are also 

 placed in Pier-case 19. The horn-cores of one specimen 

 have a span of over six feet. 



Goats and sheep are almost unknown among fossils, l)ut 

 a few fragments are shown in Pier-case 16. 



Skulls and other remains of extinct antelopes, chiefly from 

 the Lower Pliocene of Greece, the Isle of Samos, Persia, and 

 India, are arranged in Pier-case 16. Palmoreas, Tragoccros, 

 and Criothcrium are especially noteworthy. Among the 

 remains of gazelles, there is a horn-core (Gazdla anglica) from 

 the Lower I'liocene Coralline Crag of Suffolk. 



Pier-case 



21. 

 Case U. 



Pier-case 

 21. 



SuB-OEDER 4. — Amblypoda. 



From some of the preceding observations it is evident 

 that most of the existing mammals can be traced back by 

 a series of gradations to small five-toed creatures, with an 

 insignificant In'ain-capacity, at the l)eginning of the Eocene 

 period. A few of the herbivorous mammals of the primitive 

 grade never advanced beyond this lowly condition, but grew 

 to unwieldy proportions, like those of a rhinoceros or ele- 

 phant. Their head became large, but the brain itself alw^ays 

 remained ridiculously small (Fig. 35a). Their limbs became 

 massive pillars, with little five-toed stumpy feet (Fig. 35b, c), 

 merely to su})port the (jvergrown body. They are appro- 

 priately named Amblypoda (" blunt feet ") in allusion to the 

 latter feature. They lived only during the Eocene period, 

 but they seem to have been very wddely distributed, their 

 remains having been found in Europe and North America, 

 and perhaps South America. 



The first descriljed fragment of an Amblypod is a piece 

 of mandil)le named Coniphodon eocsenus by Owen in 1846, 

 probably from the London Clay, but dredged off the Essex 



