MIOCENE PERIOD 157 



quartering, so to speak, having been removed from the family 

 escutcheon (Ursavus). The habits of these various animals 

 were probably much as those of bears now hving. At any 

 rate, they were too heavily built and too flat of foot to be 

 successful in the chase. The same may be said of certain 

 North American forms which at this time were developing 

 into raccoons (Leptardus). The latter animals, indeed, may 

 have subsisted chiefly on fish. 



Some extinctions and many developments had taken place 

 among plant-eating animals. Old famiUes from which tapirs, 

 horses, and rhinoceroses had been derived, had passed away 

 {LopModontidce, PalcBotheriidcB). And a hke fate had over- 

 taken xiphodonts, and other forerunners of ruminants 

 (Anoplotheria). 



Rhinoceroses were now represented by forms old and rhino- 

 new. Old-fashioned hornless brutes were still living in ceroses 

 Europe and in North America. (A ceratherium). On the latter 

 continent these animals were now supplemented by a few 

 creatures, whose snouts exhibited some promise of being 

 supplied with horns (piceratherium). The descendant forms, 

 however, were never endowed with those weapons ; and 

 rhinoceroses, as developed in America, proved too innocuous 

 for survival. Very different was the fortune of the family in 

 the old world. Here many of the animals had well-weaponed 

 snouts (R. sansaniensis) ; and thus armed were able to face 

 the course of events, whilst their hornless relatives dwindled 

 to extinction. 



Deer — hornless in the last Period — were now being equipped deer 

 for combat (Dicroceros elegans). The antlers were not as yet 

 of an elaborate kind, as the shaft or beam never seems to 

 have borne more than one tine. The shafts were supported 

 on good-sized, bony pedicles ; and the appearance of the 

 armature must have been very much as that of the Muntjac 

 deer now living in Asia. The appendages, it is clear, were 

 not permanent like the horns of the rhinoceroses, but were 

 shed and renewed periodically as in the case of modern deer. 



The four-horned, deer-like animals of the Oligocene (Proto- 

 ceras) were now represented by a few vanishing forms 

 (Syndyoceras). The horns had become so big and mutually 



