PLEISTOCENE OF EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND NORTH AMERICA 401 



Among the rodents, Tnxjontherium reappears accompanied by beavers 

 {Castor fiber) and marmots (Marniota) . 



It is especially noteworthy and characteristic of this fauna that it con- 

 tains no types either of the cold northern steppes or of the tundras, that, 

 beside the absence of the musk ox and the rarity of the reindeer, no 

 arctic rodents are recorded. 



The appearance of the earliest skeletal remains of man is the fact of 

 most tremendous interest in this great life zone. Such remains are cer- 

 tainly intermingled with those of the mammoths and other mammals. 

 The earliest {EoUthic) human stage {Homo heidelbergensis) belongs to the 

 earlier phase of Mosbach, while the remains of the palaeolithic {Homo nean- 

 dertalensis) belong in the later phase of the period of Taubach and Krapina. 

 Of these we shall speak more fully on a later page. It is important, hovv- 

 ever, to call attention again to the differences of opinion between Penck and 

 Boule (p. 380) as to the correlation of the mammalian fauna of the geo- 

 logic glacial and interglacial phases and the human culture stages. 



A unit fauna. — A grandly distinctive fact is that in all the localities 

 listed below we have a substantially similar mammalian fauna, that is, a 

 fauna composed of similar or closely related species, which may have re- 

 treated with the advance of the ice but reappeared in interglacial times. 



We note that it is the stage prior to the appearance of the true mammoth 

 {E. primigenius) , as well as prior to that of the atelodine or dicerine rhinocer- 

 oses {D. antiquitatis) ; we note the absence of the steppe and tundra types 

 of mammals, which only arrive in a later stage, and that the fauna taken 

 together is that of forests, river borders, and of an open meadow countrj^ con- 

 taining a mingling of hardy forms of the north, like the deer and the moose, 

 with probably the more sensitive forms of the south. 



The horse was distributed over all the northern hemisphere in the older 

 Pleistocene, both in glacial and interglacial epochs. The specific references 

 to E. caballus fossilis are very indefinite and doubtful. The horses of the long, 

 warm, interglacial stage were remarkable for their great size, which exceeded 

 that of the largest living breeds. According to Pohlig ^ they were at all 

 times accompanied by wild asses {? E. hemionus). This, we are inclined, 

 however, to believe was a feature of the Asiatic steppe period, in which we 

 should expect to find asses similar to the dzegettai of Asia. 



Flora of the interglacial periods. — As in the first or Norfolk interglacial, 

 the climate was perceptibly warmer, or at least more equable and humid 

 than at the present time. In fact, during the second long, warm interglacial 

 and the shorter, or third interglacial period, there was a recurrence of con- 

 ditions milder than the present. A vision of the flora is afforded in the 

 Quaternary tuffs of Provence^ which are associated with the remains of 



• Pohlig, H., Eiszeit und Urgoschichto dos Menschcn. Leipzig, 1907. 

 ^ De Saporta, G., La Flore des Tufs Quaternaires en Provence. C. R. Sess. Congr. Sci. 

 France. Aix, 1867. 

 2d 



