150 THE INTERPRETATION OP THE PALEONTOLOGICAL CRITERIA 



ground. Bhrmenbach in 1799 pressed the common Siberian name into 

 scientific use as Mammut, this was gallicized by Cuvier into " Mam- 

 mouth/' from which, it is an easy transition to our common name Mam- 

 moth, which really does not refer to the great size of the beast after all, 

 as many suppose. 



Eemains of the Mammoth, or Mastodon, have been found in both the 

 Northern and Southern Hemispheres, particularly in the Northern, 

 Elephant Point at the mouth of the Buckland river in Alaska being so- 

 named from the quantities of mammoth bones which have accumulated 

 there, being brought down from the interior in the river-ice. Siberia 

 has long been noted for the abundance of its fossil elephants, several hav- 

 ing been found with the frozen flesh still adhering to the bones, in the 

 ice of that region. The specimen on exhibition in the Eoyal Museum 

 of Natural History at St. Petersburg was found intact and imbedded in 

 the ice on the banks of the Lena river, the mounted skeleton showing 

 patches of the hide still attached to the skull. 



Osborn has suggested that Africa was the original home of the ele- 

 phant family from whence they migrated over the late Tertiary land- 

 bridges across the Mediterranean sea into Europe, from thence into Asia 

 and across the then dry channel of Bering straits into Alaska and the 

 rest of North America, the Mastodon even penetrating far into South 

 America. This theory has recently received confirmation in the discov- 

 ery of ancestral forms by Beadnell and Andrews in the middle (Mcerithe- 

 rium) and upper (Palaeomastodon) Eocene of the Fayum region of 

 Egypt. Forms showing a transition toward the more modern types have 

 been discovered in the upper Tertiary of India and eastern Asia. 



The early elephants of North America from the Loup Fork beds were 

 small in size, with short trunks, and possessed four comparatively short 

 tusks, two above and two below, clearly indicating their origin from 

 modified incisor teeth and suggestive of the front teeth of a rodent; 

 The tusks of the upper jaw curve downward and show a band of enamel 

 on their outer sides hinting of the time when this enamel insured a sharp 

 edge to the tooth, which worked against its fellow in the lower jaw in 

 cutting food. 



