﻿ELEPHAS ANTIQUUS— INTRODUCTION. 



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species of Elephant and another is impracticable in several instances ; for example, 

 although the ordinary true grinder of the Mammoth, E. antiquus, and E. meridionals, 

 can be easily distinguished when entire and the crown-sculpturing fully developed ; still, 

 there are varieties of crowns in these and other species barely distinguishable from one 

 another. In making this statement I by no means desire to advance an opinion that 

 the above-mentioned forms are mere varieties of one species of Elephant, such as is usually 

 understood by the term species. At the same time, considering the conditions under 

 which Pliocene and Pleistocene Elephants existed as compared with their living represen- 

 tatives, it seems to me that their dentitions and osteologies are likely to exhibit more 

 extensive modifications ; indeed, the variability in connection with the dental materials, 

 here referred to E. antiquus, has no equal, as far as I am able to discover, in the denti- 

 tion of either of the two recent Elephants. 



In the ' Synoptical Table of the Species of Mastodon and Elephant ' published by 

 Dr. Falconer in 1857 1 he divides the Genus Elephas into the sub-genera Stegodon, 

 Loxodon, and Euelephas, and characterises each sub-genus by certain dental peculiarities. 

 The Elephas antiquus is included, along with E. primigenius, E. Indicus, E. Columbia 

 E. Armeniacus, E. Namadicus, and E. Hgsudricus, in the last sub-genus, which is 

 split up into four groups, in the second of which he places the E. antiquus and 

 E. Namadicus. 



The definition of the sub-genus Euelephas by the author is — " Dentium molarium 

 3 utrinque intermediorum coronis lamellosa colliculis cleinceps numero auctis, ani- 

 someris, attenuatis, compressis. Prsemolares nulli." 



The dental characters common to the Elephas antiquus and Elephas Namadicus are 

 — " Colliculi approximati medio leviter dilatati, machseridibus undulatis." 



With reference to these distinctions, as peculiar to the E. antiquus and E. Namadicus 

 although general, they cannot be accepted as invariable, as is shown by the admission 

 subsequently, by the author, of the loxodontine type of E. priscus as a variety of the 

 above, and the absence of central dilatation in the " broad-crowned " variety of the 

 Eleplias antiquus. Indeed, central expansion and angulation, as will be shown in the 

 sequel, are occasionally met with in certain molars of all or nearly all the living and extinct 

 Elephants hitherto discovered ; moreover, these, as well as the other characters, are shown 

 in all the Maltese fossil Elephants which Falconer correlated with the Loxodontes, 3 but 

 now from data I have furnished elsewhere they come closer to the Eulephas or the 

 anisomerous ridge formula. 3 



The close affinities between Elephas antiquus and the Elephas Namadicus seem to 

 have been the cause of Dr. Falconer first calling in question the teeth from British strata, 

 which had been hitherto correlated with those of the Mammoth ; indeed, looking to the 

 figures and descriptions he has left behind him, it seems to me remarkable that he 



1 'Pal. Mem.,' vol. ii, p. 14. 2 Idem, p. 298. 3 ' Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond.,' vol. is, p. 3G. 



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