SUCCESSIVE MAMMALIAN FAUNAS 



239 



With rather small and somewhat horse-like head, long neck, 

 long fore limbs and shorter hind limbs, these extraordinary 

 animals united short, three-toed feet, which were armed with 

 enormous claws. The long persistence (to the Pleistocene of 

 Asia) and wide geographical range of the tchalicotheres are 

 sufficient evidence that their very unusual structure must 



Fig. 129. — The small, tpaired-horned rhinoceros {fDiceratherium cooki) of the lower 

 Miocene. Restored from a skeleton in the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh. 



have been advantageous to them, but the problem of their 

 habits and mode of life is still unsolved. From the character 

 of the teeth, the long neck and fore limbs, it may, however, 

 be inferred that they fed chiefly upon the leaves of trees. 



Even more numerous and varied were the Artiodactyla. 

 Peccaries of a primitive sort were common, and we find the 

 last of the series of f" giant pigs," which had been a very con- 

 spicuous group throughout the Oligocene. The lower Miocene 

 genus, ^Dinohyus, was a monstrous beast, six feet or more in 

 height, with formidable canine tusks and a very long head 

 made grotesque by bony excrescences upon the skull and jaws. 

 For a pig, the legs were very long and the feet slender, having 



