THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



NEW SERIES. DECADE VI. VOL. II. 



No. VIII.— AUGUST, 1915. 



OKiia-IIsr^^Jl. AETICLBS. 



I. — Note on a Mounted Skeleton of Mtotsagus saleasicus, 



Bate. 



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



(PLATE XII.) 



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



IN the volume of this Magazine for the year 1909 (p. 385) 

 Miss D. M. A. Bate gave a short account with some figures of 

 a remarkably modified goat-like ruminant .discovered in some 

 remnants of cave-deposits in Majorca. 1 The chief peculiarities of 

 this curious creature are that (1) instead of possessing the three pairs 

 of incisors and pair of canines in the lower jaw, usual in the group, 

 only the median pair of incisors remains, and these teeth are modified 

 to form large permanently growing teeth like the incisors of a 

 rodent ; (2) the cannon bones on both the front and hind foot are 

 extraordinarily shortened, this being especially marked in the former. 



On a second expedition Miss Bate discovered that this remarkable 

 form also occurred in Minorca, where it attained a somewhat larger 

 size. In a recently published detailed description 2 of the skeleton 

 the present writer has referred this large form to a distinct variety 

 under the name Myotragus balearicus, var. major. Fortunately the 

 collections made in Majorca were so large and complete that although 

 in only a very few cases any bones of a single individual were found 

 definitely associated, nevertheless it has been found possible to 

 reconstruct the skeleton nearly completely, the only difficulty arising 

 from the considerable individual variation in size occurring in the 

 species. A figure of the mounted skeleton is shown on Plate XII. 



In this reconstruction the skull and mandible are casts of the 

 type-specimen, but the premaxillary region has been restored from 

 another individual. The actual type skull and mandible are shown 

 in the figure mounted on a separate stand. The vertebral column in 

 part belongs to one individual, but has been completed with other 

 vertebras, and in some cases, especially in the caudal region, with 

 plaster models. The ribs are mainly restorations. In the fore-limb 

 only the scapula has been partly restored ; all the rest is composed of 

 actual bones, the collection including numerous examples of the 



1 An account of these caves was published by Miss Bate in this Magazine, 

 1914, p. 337. 



2 Phil. Trans., ser. B, 330, vol. ccvi, pp. 281-304 [pis. 19-22]. 

 DECADE VI. — VOL. II.— NO. VIII. 22 



