540 Br. G. W. Andrews — Fossil Mammals from Salonica. 



accuratel}' by Dr. Reed; but it may be added that the sutural edges 

 are faintly crenelate (II, 2), and this appearance, though not 

 specifically mentioned by him, may have, consciously or unconsciously, 

 prompted his belief that subvective grooves ran along the depressed 

 sutures. 



III. — NOTK ON SOME FoSSIL MAMMAtS FEOM SaLONICA AND ImBKOS. 

 By C. W. Andrews, D.Sc, F.E.S. (British Museum, Nat. Hist.). 

 (Published by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 



O'N several occasions during the War, officers on active service in 

 the Near East have found time to collect a few fossils, some of 

 which have been sent to the British Museum. In three cases these 

 were remains of mammals, and these discoveries are of importance 

 as indicating the existence of bone-bearing deposits in localities 

 where they were previously unknown, and where, not improbably, 

 they may prove to be as rich as the well-known bone-beds of Samos 

 and Pikermi. 



The most interesting specimen from near Salonica is a nearly 

 complete right maxilla, with portions of the premaxilla and jugal, 

 of a very large species of Ht/cena. This fragment is in a beautiful 

 state of preservation : the second, third, and fourth premolars are 

 entire, while the canine and first premolar are represented by their 

 sockets and the first molar by its outer root. The bone is hard and 

 nearly white, with irregular patches of black stain which give it 

 a peculiar piebald appearance: some specimens from Maragha are 

 in an almost identical state of preservation. An incomplete skull 

 and other fragments of Sipparion from tlie village of Dudular, 

 N.N.W. of Salonica, are in exactly the same condition, and no doubt 

 the Sycena jaw was from the same deposit (see Text-figure, p. 541). 

 This fixes the age as Upper Pliocene, and therefore contemporary 

 with the bone-beds of Samos, Pikermi, and other localities in which 

 the Pontian fauna is found. 



In front the bone is preserved as far as the suture with the 

 premaxilla, a narrow strip of which remains. Above, the facial 

 portion is somewhat incomplete, while posteriorly the bone joins the 

 jugal, which bears a blunt, somewhat forwardly directed postorbital 

 process. Above the canine the surface is very convex owing to the 

 very large size of the alveolus of that tooth. The relatively small 

 antorbital foramen is situated vertically above the anterior root of 

 p.m. 3. The lower border of tlie orbit, so far as preserved, differs 

 from that of other Hyaenas with which it has been compared 

 {H. crocuta, eximia, etc.) in being less sharply separated from the 

 facial surface, but passing into it by a gentle curve; the postorbital 

 process of the jugal also differs in being blunt and turned forward,, 

 instead of pointed and more or less turned backwards: unfortunately 

 this region is wanting in the type of H. brevirosiris, Aymard,^ to 

 which the present species is in some j-espects similar. Judging 

 from its alveolus the canine must have been a very large tooth, 



■* Boule, Annales des Sciences NatureUes, Zoologie, vol. xv, p. 85, pi. i,. 

 1893. 



