CHAPTER XV 



SOME EXTINCT SHEEP 



As already mentioned, the geological history of 

 sheep is still very imperfectly known, and such 

 extinct species as have been described throw little 

 or no light on the origin of the group, which appears 

 to be relatively modern. In the chapter on the 

 mouflon reference has been made to certain fossil 

 sheep more or less nearly related to that species, 

 and the present chapter contains a brief account of 

 such other extinct representatives of the group as 

 have been described. 



In the year 1880, Mr. E. T. Newton described,* 

 under the name of Caprovis savini, a fragment of 

 the frontal region, with a considerable portion of 

 one horn-core, of the skull of a sheep from the 

 so-called Forest-bed of the Norfolk coast, which 

 belongs to the early part of the Pleistocene, or 

 latest, epoch of geological history. In size and in the 

 curvature of the horn this specimen has been stated 

 to agree rather closely with the corresponding por- 

 tion of the skull of the continental representatives 

 of the red sheep {Ovis orientalis), although the 



• Geological Magazine, decade 2, vol. vii. p. 449, 1886. 



308 



