1902.] ox A FOSSIL HIPPOPOTAMUS FROM CYPRUS. 1Q7 



5. On the Pigmy Hippopotamus from the Pleistocene o£ 

 C'yprus. By C. I. Forsyth Major, F.Z.S. 



[Received May 13, 1902.] 

 (Plates IX. & X.') 



The_ present paper deals with some selected specimens from a 

 collection of bones of a pigmy Hippopotamus taken from caves 

 and ossiferous breccias in Cyprus. It gives me great pleasure to 

 announce that this exceedingly interesting first indication of a 

 Pleistocene Mammalian fauna on the island is entirely due to the 

 untiring energy of a young English lady, Miss Dorothy M. A. Bate, 

 who started last year for Cyprus with the express purpose of 

 discovei-ing and exploring ossiferous caves. 



Miss Bate is not a novice in cave-hunting. About two years 

 ago, when residing in the Wye valley, she heard of bones having 

 been found in a cave which had been more oi- less dug up by miners 

 in seai-ch of iron-ore. The Natural History Museum owes to her 

 an interesting collection of Pleistocene small mammals from this 

 cave, of which she has published an account in the ' Geological 

 Magazine ' '. 



Although Cyprus has been now for over twenty years under 

 British administration, no attempt had been made to investigate 

 the extinct Mammalian fauna of this, the third largest of the 

 Mediterranean islands. But, from what I shall have to say 

 hereafter, it would appear that some scanty remains of a pigmy 

 Hippopotamus of this very same species have been for over one 

 hundred years in certain French museums, and were believed to 

 have come from some locality in the south of Fi-ance, whereas there 

 are strong grounds for the presumption that they were also in 

 reality from Cyprus. 



The first samples addressed to me by Miss Bate several months 

 ago consisted in some much- worn teeth about the size of a pig's 

 molars, which showed no indication of the trefoil pattei-n so 

 chai-acteristic of the Hippopotamus molai's. A second small 

 parcel contained a few less-worn teeth, together with a tooth's 

 germ, from which it became at once evident that we had to do 

 with a mammal of the Hippopotamus tribe, about half the size of 

 a middle-sized ff. amphihius, and the molaivs of which exhibited a 

 modification of the common Hippopotamus pattern, approximating 

 them to a less specialized type of Artiodactyle teeth. The well- 

 Icnown pattern of four trefoils is produced in the Hippopotamus 

 molars b}' crests emanating in a longitudinal direction from the 

 anterior and posterior side of each of the four principal cusps or 

 pyramids, thus obstructing in pai-t the transverse valley between 

 them. In the molars from Cyprus the crests and the grooves 

 separating the former from the cusps are much less developed, 



1 For explanation of the Plates, see p. 112. 



2 Geol. Mag. (4) viii. pp. 101-106 (1901). 



