264 THE AGE OF MAMMALS 



anthropoid; it is represented by three lower jaws and a humerus found 

 in the Middle Miocene of St. Gaudens in southern France. From recent 

 examination of all the discussions regarding this famous fossil, which has 

 by some been placed near the line of human ancestry, Schwalbe ^ con- 

 cludes that while the molars resemble those of man, this ape cannot be 

 brought nearer, perhaps not so near, the line of human ancestry as the 

 other anthropoids. How far Dryopithecus may be regarded as a stem 

 form from which on the one side the line led to the human race and from 

 the other to the living anthropoids, namely, the chimpanzee, orang, gibbon, 

 and gorilla, cannot as yet be certainly determined. In one feature, the 

 relative shortness of the humerus, this animal approaches the chimpanzee 

 more closely than it does the other anthropoids. 



Upper Miocene, Pontian 



With this stage we enter the newer Miocene fauna, sometimes known 

 as the Hipparion fauna, the most famous, the most widely distributed, 

 and the best known of all the mammalian faunas of the Old World. It is 

 highly distinctive and sharply demarcated from the older mammals by the 

 new Asiatic, or Oriental, American, and possibly African mammals which 

 it contains, especially by the great abundance of grazing and cursorial 

 types which make their first appearance in southern Europe. These new 

 forms are as follows: 



Hipparions, fleet, grazing horses from Asia and North America. 

 Hares, or true leporids from Asia and North America. 

 Rhinoceroses, dicerine (genus Diceros), or atelodine (i.e. without 



cutting teeth), similar to those of modern Africa. 

 Giraffes, hornless, in great number and variety. 

 Antelopes relatedHo the existing gazelles (Gazella), oryx (Oryx), 



elands (Oreas), harnessed antelopes (Tragelaphus) , water bucks 

 I (Cobus), eic. 

 True deer, the roe deer (Capreolus). 

 Ancestral sheep (Criotherium). 

 Ancestral hyaenas {I ctitherium) . 



Hyracoids or coneys (PUohyrax), probably from Africa. 

 Aardvarks (Oryderopus) from Africa or Asia. 



This new fauna, on the whole, is very distinctly similar to that of modem 

 equatorial, east, or plateau Africa with the exception of the true Cervidse, 

 which never found their way into central Africa. However, it is rather 

 Asiatic than African in origin and evolution; in short, many of these 

 mammals appear to be on their way to Africa from Asia. Still another 



■ Schwalbe, G., Uber fossile Primaten und ihre Bedeutung fiir die Vorgeschichte des 

 Menschen. Mitteil. Philomath. Ges. Elsass-Lothringen, Vol. IV, no. 1, Decade 16 (1908), 

 Strassburg, 1909, pp. 45-61. 



