THE MIOCENE OF EUROPE, ASIA, AND NORTH AMERICA 295 



fauna. These animals are of three (Hfferent kinds. The first, Merycodus,^ 

 presented externally the appearance of a diminutive American deer, twenty 

 inches high at the withers, with three-tined antlers nine inches in length. It is 

 the leader of the newly aj^i^x^aring family of merycodonts, distinguished by 

 the possession of the deciduous branching antlers of the American deer 

 type combined with the skeletal characters of the American prong-horned 

 antelopes (Antilocapridae), and provided with elongate or hypsodont grinding 



Fig. 147. — Skeletons of the Eocene four-toed horse Eohippus vcnticolus, and of the Miocene 

 forest or browsing horse Hypohippus osborni. In the American Museum of Natural History. 



teeth, thus a plains-living or grazing form. The second cervid type is a horn- 

 less animal of smaller proportions, known as Blastomeryx, a successor of Lepto- 

 meryx, and apparently a member of the American branch of the true Cer- 

 vidffi. This is a browsing animal with short-crowned teeth; in its propor- 

 tions it is similar to the cervuline or musk deer of Europe; it stands twelve 

 to eighteen inches high at the shoulders, and is hornless.- The third rumi- 

 nant of this stage is Dromomeryx, also a brachyodont or browsing form, of 

 larger size, closely similar in its tooth structure to the hornless Paloeomeryx 



' See Matthew, W. D., A Complete Skeleton of Merycodus. Bull. Amer. Miis. Nat. Hist., 

 Vol. XX, 1904, p. 128. 



In the Antilocapridte the Ijony horn core i.s permanent like that of the Bovinse, Init the 

 horn sheath is annually .shed, a very peculiar coml)ination of characters. 



- The beginnings of antlers appear only in the Upper Miocene representatives of this 

 phylum (Scott). 



