1 84 STUDIES FOR STUDENTS 



Megaladapis is a very large form from the post- Pleistocene of 

 Madagascar. The skull was about two feet long. The animal 

 seems to have lived in the island as late as the seventeenth 

 century. 



Anthropoidea. — The true apes do not appear until the middle 

 of the Miocene ; in Europe they seem to have extended over a 

 large part of the continent as late as the Pliocene time, and one 

 genus still exists upon the rock of Gibraltar. The genera of the 

 apes multiply so rapidly that it is not possible to trace the 

 development of the forms in any limited paper. It will perhaps 

 suffice to note their occurrence in the Middle Miocene of France, 

 the Pliocene of Germany, the Pliocene and Pleistocene of India 

 and the early Tertiary of Patagonia. 



In regard to the derivation of the human family, Hominidae, 

 from the Primates Cope says (Primary Factors of Organic Evolu- 

 tion, chap. II, p. 157. The phylogeny of man) : "To return to 

 the more immediate ancestry of man I have expressed and now 

 maintain as a working hypothesis that all the Anthropomorpha 

 were descended from the Eocene lemuroids. In my system the 

 Anthropomorpha includes the two families Hominidae and 

 Simiidae. The sole difference between these families is seen in 

 the structure of the posterior foot, the Simiidae having the hal- 

 lux (great toe) opposable, while in the Hominidae the hallux is 



not opposable " " It is then highly probable that Homo 



is descended from some form of the Anthropomorpha now 

 extinct, and probably unknown at present, although we do not 

 yet know all the characters of some extinct supposed Simiidae, 

 of which fragments only remain to us." 



Smith Woodward says of the earliest men: "Most of the 

 evidence for the existence of the human race in the pre-historic 

 past consists in traces of intelligent handiwork revealed by stone 

 and other implements. A few discoveries in the old world, 

 however, are worthy of consideration. 



"The oldest known traces of a man-like skeleton seem to be 

 an imperfect roof of a skull, two molar teeth, and a diseased 

 femur, from a bed of volcanic ash containing the remains of 



