OVIBOS MOSCHATUS. 29 



CHAPTER V. 

 Conclusion. 



§ 1 . Comparison between Ovibos and Bootherium. § 2. General Conclusions. 



§ 1. Comparison between Ovibos and Bootherium. — The researches of Dr. Leidy 1 have 

 proved the existence in America of a fossil animal, which he recognises as intermediate in 

 character between Ovis and Bos, and for which, in 1852, he proposed the name of 

 Bootherium (PI. V, figs. 2, 3, 4). In his magnificent work, however, on the ' Mammalian 

 Remains of North America,' published in 1869, 2 he admits that the fossils probably 

 belong to the genus Ovibos, a conclusion which I brought before the Royal Society in 1867, 

 and printed in abstract in the 'Proceedings' (vol. xv, p. 516). The type of his genus 

 consists of two crania, the one from ferruginous gravel near Port Gibson on the river 

 Arkansas, the other from the morasses of Big Bonelick. The former of these, from the 

 admirable figures and description, clearly possesses all the characters of male Ovibos, with 

 this exception, that the bases of the horncores coalesce in the median line, and advance 

 further forward than a line connecting the anterior edges of the orbits together, and thus 

 almost completely covering both frontals and parietals. The horncores springing from 

 this elongated bone, at a distance of four inches behind the anterior portion, are flattened 

 on the top, as in male Ovibos, but their antero-posterior diameter is not so great, nor is the 

 downward direction so decided. Prom the analogous case of the horn-development in 

 Ovibos, I should infer that this cranium belonged to an old male. Prom the flatness and 

 excavation of the horncores Dr. Leidy terms it Bootherium cavifrons (PL V, fig. 2). The 

 second skull (fig. 3), which is the more perfect of the two in respect of its horncores, bears 

 exactly the same relation to that of B. cavifrons, as the male to the female Musk Sheep. 

 They are more cylindrical, smaller, and supported by the frontals. It is therefore highly 

 probable that B. cavifrons and B. bombifrons are the male and female of the same species. 

 As the lachrymal region is preserved in the second, there is evidence of a broad and deep 

 lachrymal fossa in front of the orbit, which in its depth resembles that presented by 



1 Leidy, ' Smithsonian Contrib. to Knowledge,' vol. v, art. 3, " On the Extinct Species of American 

 Ox," 1852. 



2 'Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia,' 2nd series, vol. vii, 1869, p. 374. 



