164 TEN YEAKS' PROGRESS IN VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY 



born and his staff of the American Museum, as well as many others, we 

 have now come to realize from the studies by these men of the material 

 gathered that Africa was an important disj^ersing center in early Tertiary 

 times, the phytogenies of Simiida?, Jnsectivora, Creodontia, Eodentia, 

 Proboscidia, Sirenia, Zeuglodentia, and Hyracoidea being especially sig- 

 nificant. The earlier ideas that Africa was invaded by the primitive stock 

 which originally came from the north, and that the country afterward 

 received waves of new and more highly specialized forms from the same 

 direction, will apparently have to give way to a great extent because of 

 the recent knowledge obtained. 



AYhile the suborder Artiodactyla is not as yet well represented in th- 

 known fossil fauna of Egypt, we do find, in Doctor Andrew's Descriptive 

 Catalogue (1906), such genera of the Upper Eocene as Ancodon and 

 Rhagatherium of the Anthracotheriidae. 



Geniohyus was included in the Suidge by Andrews, but Schlosser has 

 very recently^ placed this so-called suid with the Hyracoidea {Bunoliyrax 

 n. g.). The true ancestral forms of later Tertiary anthracotheres, or 

 pigs,^ not being recognized either in the European or American Eocene, 

 we may ask: Did they come from a Xorth-Asiatic center, or is it possible 

 that they originated in Africa? Schlosser's recent work (loc. cit.) ap- 

 pears to be negatory to the latter idea, but may we not yet find in the 

 Tertiary deposits of Africa not only the remains of the Hippopotamidae 

 and anthracotheres, but possibly even the representatives of the Suidae 

 and, shall I say, the antelopes? Is it possible that we may yet find the 

 ancestors in the African Tertiary^ of the great ruminant fauna which at 

 present occupies that country? 



Our interest in connection with the Artiodactyla was more especially 

 directed toward the survey of the earlier ancestors of the Agriochceridae, 

 the Tylopoda, and the Tragulina, while in the last few years the pendu- 

 lum swung in the other direction and the entertainment — that is, the 

 effort to keep up with the results and progress from the collections gath- 

 ered in the later Tertiary deposits, especially of the United States — is 

 equally interesting. Of the many institutions which have recently con- 

 tributed to our knowledge of the Artiodactyla, the American Museum of 

 Xatural History has been especially active in acquiring material and 

 of study. ^luch work has been done by the California, Amherst, Yale, 

 and Princeton Universities, tlie State universities of Nebraska, Kansas, 



1 Max Schlosser : Beitriige zur Paliiontologie und Geologie Osterich-Ungarns iind des 

 Orients. Band xxiv. 1011. pp. 118-121. 



=* See Stehlin's discussion on the pigs and antliracotheres of Europe. 



^ Uvingstone in liis "Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa." chapter 26, 

 p. 556, speaks of fossil bones which lie in the calcareous tufa of the region he traversed. 



