Wortman — Studies of Eocene Mammalia, etc. 143 



Art. XV. — Studies of Eocene Mammalia in the Marsh 

 Collection, Peabody Museum ; by J. L. Wortman. 



[Continued from vol. xi, p. 450.] 



Family Viverravidw. 



Miacidaz Cope (in part), Tertiary Vertebrata, 1884; Miacidce Scott, Jour. Acad. 

 Nat. Sei., Phila , 1886, vol. ix, p. 169; Viverravidce Wortman and Matthew, Bull. 

 Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., 1899, p. 136. 



A family of small or medium-sized Carnassidents ancestral 

 to the viverrines, ranging in time, as far as at present known, 

 from the Torre jon to the Bridger Eocene, having pentedactyle 

 limbs with ununited scaphoid, lunar, and centrale of the 

 carpus, a civet-like perforation of the transverse process of the 

 atlas for the passage of the vertebral artery, a well-developed 

 anterior basal cusp upon the superior sectorial, no antero- 

 posterior femoral curvature and no postero-internal cingular 

 cusp upon the superior molars. Blades of the superior sec- 

 torial separated by a deep slit-like notch, and molar formula 

 either f as in the primitive Canidse, or f as in the Viverridse. 



In defining the foregoing family, it is necessary to distin- 

 guish it from the contemporary Canidse on the one hand and 

 its successors, the Viverridae, on the other. As regards the 

 former, while in all probability they have been derived from 

 a common source, yet they have departed sufficiently in the 

 direction of their subsequent and final development to be 

 recognizable. There are two characters that appear to be 

 entirely distinctive, one of which relates to the atlas and the 

 other to the presence or absence of an anterior basal cusp on 

 the superior sectorial ; associated with these is the lack of 

 curvature of the femur and no disposition whatever towards 

 the formation of a postero-internal cingular cusp on the 

 superior molars, — features which have characterized all lines 

 of Canidse in some stage of their development. From the 

 Yiverridse, they can be distinguished not by any essential 

 characters of fundamental importance, but only by the posses- 

 sion of such primitive and archaic features as we should 

 reasonably expect to find in the ancestors of the modern viver- 

 rines. The more important of these relate to the separate 

 condition of the scaphoid, lunar, and centrale of the carpus ; 

 the presence of a third trochanter on the femur ; the large size 

 and internal position of the lesser trochanter ; the slight groov- 

 ing of the astragalus, and the large size of the deltoid crest of 

 the humerus. To this may be added the greatly inflated and 

 modernized condition of the otic bulla in the living Viverridse. 



From the Mustelidse, as far as at present known, the Viver- 



