368 



LAND MAMMALS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE 



postero-external face, and the lower canine has a well-defined 

 groove worn on the posterior side at the base of the crown; 

 other individuals show less distinct marks of similar kind. 

 (See Fig. 194.) It is out of the question to suppose that 

 these grooves and notches could have been produced by- 

 abrasion with other teeth, for no other teeth could reach 

 the worn areas, and it is altogether probable that they were 

 made in digging up roots. The root, held firmly in the ground 

 at both ends and looped over the teeth which pulled until it 



broke, and being covered with 

 abrasive grit, would wear just 

 such marks as the teeth actually 

 display.^ While the fentelo- 

 donts were thus rooters, they 

 were doubtless omnivorous, like 

 other pigs, and did not disdain 

 a meal of carrion when they 

 could get it. It is likely that 

 the heavy canine tusks were 

 also used as weapons, both in 

 defence against the attacks of 

 carnivores and in fighting be- 

 tween the males of the same species. It must have been in 

 some such encounter that the animal represented by a com- 

 plete skeleton in the Princeton Museum received its broken 

 rib ; that the fracture was made during life is demonstrated 

 by the large callus growths" on the broken ends, but the pieces 

 did not knit. 



In the middle and lower substages of the White River the 

 genus (^Archoeotherium) was the same as in the upper substage 

 of these beds, but the species were all smaller and some of them 

 very much so, not exceeding an ordinary pig in size. Through- 

 out the series, as we now have it, from the lower Oligocene into 



1 This plausible and no doubt correct explanation was suggested to me by 

 my colleague, Professor C. F. Braekett. 



Fig. 194. —Specimen showing oharao- 

 . teristic grooves of wear in the anterior 

 teeth of fentelodont ('\Archceotherium) 

 from upper White River beds. Prince- 

 ton University Museum. 



