4 PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



It may be well here to refer to the reported occurrence of hyaenoid animals in North 

 America. In iiis paper on "The Extinct Dogs of North America," 1883, Cope ^ 

 described a form from the Upper Miocene beds of Nebraska and New Mexico, which he 

 named jMurodon Wheclcrianus. He grouped this with the Canidse, but nevertheless 

 suspected it to be the ancestor of the Hya3ni(la3, a view which Schlosser ^ accepts, altering 

 Cope's name to ProJij/dna. In 189.2, Cope ^ published a brief reference to a hyoena- 

 likc form from the Pliocene of Texas, which differed fro\n Hi/(sna proper in having a 

 fourth premolar in the lower jaw, and ])robably a shorter blade to the sectorial tooth 

 of the upper jaw. lie named this Borophagm divcrsidciis. Lastly, in 1895, Cope* 

 founded a new species of Jlijana {II. inrxpcdala) on a tooth from a fissure at Port 

 Kennedy, Pennsylvania, which Lydckkcr^ suggests may prove to belong to a Nimravtis' 



11. DISTRIBUTION IN BRITAIN AND ELSEWHERE. 



While a number of Tertiary species of hyaena have l)een recognised on the Continent, 

 only detached teeth of this genus have hitherto been discovered below the Forest Bed in 

 Britain." From the latter horizon, however, at Corton Cliff, Suffolk, hyscna remains were 

 described by Newton^ in 1883. These consist of the canine, and second, third, and 

 fourth premolars, all from the upper jaw, and all clearly referable to //. crocula. It is 

 thus evident that the animal was an immigrant from the continent of Europe in Pliocene 

 times. In this respect it resembles the cave bear and horse, with which its remains 

 are often associated, and differs from the lion, which does not appear to have reached 

 England till Pleistocene times. 



In these times the hya3na was extremely plentiful in England. Its remains 

 are not infrequent in river gravels, but its almost universal occurrence in cave deposits 

 shows that in the Pleistocene period it was essentially a cave dweller as it is at the 

 present time. The fact that these caves were the actual dens of the hysenas, in which 

 they lived and died, is clear from the frequent occurrence of coprolites, of splintered and 

 gnawed bones, and of the teeth of young individuals. Referring to the state of the 

 bones in the Robin Hood Cave, Boyd Dawkins ® says : " With few exceptions the solid 

 bones arc alone perfect, the long bones containing marrow, and the vertebra} being 

 represented merely by gnawed fragments. All the lower jaws have lost their angles 

 and corouoid processes, and the number of teeth stands in a greater ratio to the number 

 of bones than would have been the case had not their possessors fallen a prey to a bone- 



1 ' Amcr. Nat.,' xvii, p, 243. - ' Beitr. Pal. Osterreicb-Uiigarns,' iii, \). 25. 



3 ' Atuer. Nat.,' xxvi, p. 1028. * ' Proc. Ac. Nat. Sci. Pbilad.,' 1805, p. 446. 



5 'Zool. Record,' 1895, p. 28. 



" Hyiena antiqua, Laiikester, 'Ami. Mag. Nat. Hist.,' sei'. o, vol. xiii, 1864, p. 56, pi. viii, figs. 

 5, G, from EoJ Crag, Suifolk. 

 . 7 < Gcol. Mag.,' 1883, p. 433. •** ' Q. J. Geol. Soc.,' xxxii, p. 245. 



