26o BRITISH MAMMALS 



Sub-Order: PROBOSCIDEA. ELEPHANTS 



It is now thought that the Elephants originated in North 

 Africa, their original centre of evolution perhaps including 

 the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Dr. C. W, Andrews, 

 travelling through the Fayum district of Lower Egypt (where 

 the Nile once formed a considerable lake in the Libyan Desert), 

 came across early Tertiary deposits, one of which, of the Upper 

 Eocene, contained remarkable Proboscidean remains attributed 

 to a creature which has been named Mceritherium lyonsi. This 

 creature, which offers slight resemblances in its teeth (allowing 

 for the dwindling canines) to Coryphodon, had three incisor teeth 

 and a small canine on each side of the upper jaw, and two 

 proclivous ^ incisors ; possibly, also, a minute canine on each side 

 of the lower jaw. In the upper and lower jaws there were three 

 premolars and three molar teeth, and in the succession of the 

 last-named (by teeth growing up from the inside of the jaw bone 

 and successively displacing the worn-out molars) there is a hint 

 at one of the most peculiar features characterising the elephants 

 of to-day. Apparently in North Africa, or the eastern basin of 

 the Mediterranean, the mastodon, dinotherium, and no doubt 

 other unknown forms of Proboscideans, developed from this 

 primitive type of Mceritherium. From this focus between Egypt 

 and Syria the mastodon (of which a very early type was found 

 in the same Fayum deposits) travelled into Asia (where from the 

 Stegodonts the True Elephants were developed), and from Asia 

 into America (North and South) on the one hand, and Europe 

 on the other. The mastodon, the earlier types of which had 

 tusks in the lower as well as in the upper jaw, thus became the 

 most widely spread form of elephant, having apparently reached 

 to every country in the world, with the exception of Antarctica 

 and Australia. The remains of two species (^Mastodon arvernensis 

 and Mastodon borsont) have been found in East Anglia (Suffolk 

 Crag), but as these were probably not contemporaneous with 



^ Perhaps it is necessary to explain that this word means inclined forward 

 in a horizontal direction. 



