1458 



CLASS MAMMALIA. 



Fig. 1341. — Palatal view of right upper and lower 

 dentition of Myogale moschata. Europe. 



forms from the French Lower Miocene, to which the names Echino- 

 gale and Mysarachne have been applied. These genera, and per- 

 haps the following one, seem to show indications of a transition 

 between the existing members of the Erinaceidce, Soriadce, and Tal- 

 pidce ; and thus, together with the imperfect nature of the remains 



by which they are known, 

 render the determination of 

 their serial position a matter 

 of great difficulty. The 

 French Lower Miocene has 

 also yielded the allied genus 

 Plesiosorex (fig. 1342), which 

 appears to have belonged to 

 the present subfamily, but 

 is only known by the man- 

 dible, in which there are ten 

 teeth. The smaller Amphi- 

 dozotherium, from the Quercy 

 Phosphorites, is said to be 

 allied to the existing fossorial 

 genus Urotrichus of Japan and North America. In the second 

 subfamily, or Talpincz, in which the humerus and clavicle are of 

 enormous relative breadth, the typical genus Talpa (fig. 1343) has 

 the same dental formula as in Myogale. The common Mole, T. 

 europcea, occurs fossil in the Norfolk Forest-bed, while a species 

 from the Pleistocene breccia of Sardinia is regarded as peculiar, 



and named T. tyrrhenaica. 

 The genus itself is apparently 

 as old as the Lower Miocene, 

 although the species (T. tellu- 

 ris) from the middle stage of 

 that period has been distin- 

 guished by some writers as 

 Hyporyssus, and the one from 

 the lower stage (T. acutidens) 

 as Geotrypus. 1 The Quercy 

 Phosphorites have yielded a 

 very closely allied form, which 

 is, however, regarded by its describer as generically distinct, and 

 named Protalpa cadurcensis. From the Eocene of North America 

 an allied genus has been described under the name of Talpavus ; 

 but the so-called Herpetotherium, of the Miocene of the same 

 country, which has been regarded as related to the Moles, is 

 referred to Didelphys (fig. 1151, p. 1281). 



1 Preoccupied by Geotmpes in the Coleoptera. 



Fig. 1342. — Left ramus of lower jaw of Plesio- 

 sorex soricinoides, wanting the last true molar 

 and the teeth between the first incisor and the 

 fourth premolar; from the Lower Miocene of the 

 Auvergne. Twice natural size. (After De Blain- 

 ville.) 



