PETERSON : NEW CARNIVORES FROM MIOCENE OF WESTERN NEBRASKA 261 
From the study of the osteology of Daphwnodon superbus it is quite evident 
that this genus belongs to a phylum existing through the Oligocene and Miocene 
periods, with rather conservative adaptations when compared with such forms as 
Temnocyon, Mesocyon, Cynodesmus, Tephrocyon and in fact with many coexisting 
forms of Canidx. Although the genus should be, for the present at least, regarded 
as belonging to the subfamily Amphicyonine, it is not altogether unlikely that, 
upon gaining more complete knowledge of all the different supposed allied forms, 
it will be regarded as representing a separate subfamily (Daphenine) paralleling 
Temnocyon, Mesocyon, Cynadesmus, and Tephrocyon on the one hand and the true 
Amphicyon on the other, but less differentiated from Daphanus than either of the 
genera regarded as descendants from the Oligocene forms. The phylum terminated, 
most probably, in some such forms as Dinocyon or Borophagus, or perhaps in some 
of the so-called Amphicyones in later formations of North America, while the Amphi- 
cyoninx of Europe were paralleling the line. 
This would seem to lend color to Mr. Hatcher's contention ” that Protemnocyon 
and Proamphicyon are both valid genera, the former pointing to Temnocyon and Meso- 
cyon, while the descendants of the latter, if not ‘“Amphicyon” as Hatcher believed, 
may not yet have been discovered. The reduction or apparent absence of M3, 
together with other features in Protennocyon from the Oligocene, is suggestive of 
the later John Day form, while M% in true Daphenus still persists in an almost 
unchanged form in Daphanodon from the Miocene. 
The bony structure of Daphenodon, though extremely cat-like in many respects, 
is on the whole more closely related to the Canidex, of which family it was an aber- 
rant line not continued to the present time. A fairly good attempt has been made 
by Mr. Theodore A. Mills to construct the soft parts of Daphanus felinus, from the 
skeleton which is now in the Carnegie Museum. And the curious combination of 
the characters of the cat and the dog are, if anything, even more striking when an 
allowance of flesh is represented upon the bony structure (see Pl. LXXXV). The 
downward extent of the heavy muscles of the limbs, the broad and short feet, with 
the semi-retractile claws, the long body and tail are especially cat-like, while the 
head is dog-like in every respect. The tail is represented more or less like that of 
Felis concolor, there being no perceptible means of knowing whether this appendage 
was bushy, as in the dogs, or more slender as in cats generally. Altogether the 
model represented by the figure on Pl. LX X XV is instructive, as it furnishes at least 
a conception of a primitive form ancestral to cats and dogs. Of this primitive stem 
Daphenus and especially Daphanodon on the whole, appear to be far less specialized 
2 “Oligocene Canide,”? J. ¢., p. 105. 
