PLEISTOCENE OF EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND NORTH AMERICA 493 



palmate, and are especially distinguished by broad inferior horizontal plates.^ 

 The animal, like the moose, was undoubtedly a tr{>e-bro\vser ; the neck is 

 so short in comparison with the limbs that the muzzle could not have been 

 brought within fourteen or fifteen inches of the ground. To compensate 

 for this the animal had a prehensile upper lip, which, however, was less 

 pronounced than that of the moose. As in the moos(^, the withers are higher 



I'lG. i;i7. — The Ainciicau decr-iuoose CercaLces. Restoration from a skeleton ill tlie 

 Museum of Princeton University. After original by Charles R. Knight in the American 

 Museum of Natural History. 



than the rump. Cervalces was a contemporary of the moose, which survived 

 into recent times. 



Sirenians, or sea-cows. — On both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts in 

 Pliocene and Pleistocene times the most characteristic littoral mammals 

 were the sirenians, or sea-cows, which were either derived from the migra- 

 tion of Old World forms from Africa by way of the north Pacific and Asia, 

 or were descendants of a transatlantic {Atlantis) migration (p. 340) in 

 Eocene times which found ready access to the Pacific coast through one of 

 the great sea routes which separated North and South America as late as 

 the Pliocene period. In favor of the theory of north Pacific migration is 

 the striking similarity which exists between the Japanese and Californian 



* On comparing the antlers of Cervalces with those of the moose, it becomes evident that 

 the former consist of the same parts, with something added. Just what these additional parts 

 are is by no means easy to say. The anterior tine (of the ear-shaped process) may be the bez- 

 antler, while the posterior one may correspond to the tine which in Megaceros, the fallow-deer, 

 and some others, is given off from the hinder surface of the beam nearly opposite the bez- 

 autler. (Scott, 1885.) 



