412 THE AGE OF MAMMALS 



invention of knives and forks. This primitive type of man was shorter 

 than tlie average European (that is, 5 feet 8}^ inches) ; he is estimated of as 

 low stature as 5 feet 3J/^ inches. His lower limbs were especially powerful, 

 but his gait seems not to have been fully erect, for the knees are bent 

 slightly forward. The human character of the classic type of Neandertal, 

 discovered in 1857, has been confirmed by successive discoveries at La 

 Naulette, Spy, Krapina, and Malarnaud. 



The most remarkable skull of Mousterian age is that (Fig. 181) found 

 by the Abbes J. and A. Bouyssonie and L. Bardon in the cavern of La 

 Chapelle-aux-Saints (Correze) in 1908, associated with stone implements 

 and remains of the reindeer, urus, ibex, and woolly rhinoceros. The cranium 

 is dolichocephalic, with prominent supraorbital processes and relatively 

 short and broad nose, weak lower jaw, lacking the prominent chin pro- 

 cess. These characters, as well as the posterior position of the foramen 

 magnum and the form of the palate, are distinctly simian or pro-human.^ 



3. The Third or Upper Pleistocene Fauna 



This grand faunal stage is in many ways clearly defined from those 

 which precede it; it belongs to a period of time sharply distinguished. 

 To the anthropologist this is the close of the long Palseolithic period, in- 

 cluding successively, or in ascending order, the Aurignacian, Solutrian, and 

 Magdalenian cultures; to the student of past climates as represented in glacial 

 conditions this represents the period of the last great glaciations in the Old 

 and New Worlds, including the advance, the maximum, and the recession 

 periods; to the geologist this is the chief time of the formation of the loess 

 as well as of the final river gravels and sands, and glacial moraines and 

 boulders; to the paleontologist this is the period of the reindeer {R. taran- 

 dus), of the giant woolly rhinoceros (Diceros antiquitatis) which belongs to an 

 entirely different race from the dicerorhine type (D.mercJdi) which it replaces, 

 and of the arctic type of hairy, or woolly mammoth {E. primigenius). The 

 straight-tusked elephant {E. antiquus) no longer appears. The 'steppe 

 horse' arrives in Europe; there is evidence of steppe blood in the palseo- 

 lithic horse drawings of the Madeleine Cave, and m the deposits of the 

 Rhine Valley.^ 



Still more distinctive perhaps to the zoologist is the first certain appear- 

 ance or re-occurrence in Europe of numerous small as well as large forms 

 of the circumpolar arctic fauna, namely, of the tundra fauna, and then of 

 the steppe fauna. Thus the musk ox (0. moschatus) returns, accompanied 

 by large herds of reindeer, driven southward by the renewed advance of 



1 Boule, M., L'Homme Fossile de la Chtipelle-aux-Saints. UAnthropoL, Vol. XIX, 1909, 

 pp. 519-525. 



2 Ewart, J. C, On Skulls of Horses from the Roman Fort at Newstead, near Melrose, 

 with Observations on the Origin of Domestic Horses. Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, Vol. XLV, 

 Pt. 3, no. 20, 1907, pp. 555-587. 



