FAUNA OF THE POST-PLIOCENE. 357 



tinctively northern animal ; but it enjoyed during the Glacial 

 period a much wider range than it has at the present day, the 

 conditions suitable for its existence being then extended over 

 a considerable portion of the northern hemisphere. Thus 

 remains of the Musk-Ox are found in greater or less abun- 

 dance in Post-Pliocene deposits over a great part of Europe, 

 extending even to the south of France; and closely - related 

 forms are found in similar deposits in the United States. 



Coming to the Proboscideans, we find that the Mastodons 

 seem to have disappeared in Europe at the close of the 

 Pliocene period, or at the very commencement of the Post- 

 Pliocene. In the New World, on the other hand, a species of 

 Mastodon (J/. Americanus or M. Ohioticus) is found abun- 

 dantly in deposits of Post - Pliocene age, from Canada to 

 Texas. Very perfect skeletons of this species have been 

 exhumed from morasses and swamps, and large individuals 

 attained a length (exclusive of the tusks) of seventeen feet and 

 a height of eleven feet, the tusks being tw^elve feet in length. 

 Remains of Elephants are also abundant in the Post-Pliocene 

 deposits of both the Old and the New World. Amongst these, 

 we find in Europe the two familiar Pliocene species E. nieri- 

 dionalis and E. antiquus still surviving, but in diminished 

 numbers. With these are found in vast abundance the re- 

 mains of the characteristic Elephant of the Post-Pliocene, the 

 well-known " Mammoth " {Elephas primigenius\ which is ac- 

 companied in North America by the nearly-alHed, but more 

 southern species, the Elephas Americanus. The Mammoth (fig. 

 266) is considerably larger than the largest of the living Ele- 

 phants, the skeleton being over sixteen feet in length, exclusive 

 of the tusks, and over nine feet in height. The tusks are bent 

 almost into a circle, and are sometimes twelve feet in length, 

 measured along their curvature. In the frozen soil of Siberia 

 several carcasses of the Mammoth have been discovered with 

 the flesh and skin still attached to the bones, the most cele- 

 brated of these being a Mammoth w^hich was discovered at the 

 beginning of this century at the mouth of the Lena, on the borders 

 of the Frozen Sea, and the skeleton of which is now preserved 

 at St Petersburg (fig. 266). From the occurrence of the remains 

 of the Mammoth in vast numbers in Siberia, it might have been 

 safely inferred that this ancient Elephant was able to endure a far 

 more rigorous climate than its existing congeners. This infer- 

 ence has, how^ever, been rendered a certainty by the specimens 

 just referred to, which show that the Mammoth was protected 

 against the cold by a thick coat of reddish-brown wool, some 

 nine or ten inches long, interspersed with strong, coarse black 



