118 The Badland Formations of the Black Hills Region 



the region of the Black Hills. In that year Mr. Matthew 

 described a fragmentary jaw, Blastomeryx wellsi, from the 

 Upper Miocene. Three year^ later he refers briefly to 

 Blastomeryx advena found in the Lower Miocene. In the 

 following year, 1908, in a paper "Osteology of Blastomeryx and 

 Phylogeny of the American Cervidae.'' Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. 

 Hist., vol. 24, pp. 535-562, Mr. Matthew describes much better 

 material than hitherto accesible, defines two new species, 

 Blastomeryx primus and Blastomeryx olcotti, and summarizes 

 to date the available information concerning the ancestral deer 

 of the North American continent. Of the species found within 

 the Black Hills region Blastomeryx olcotti specimens were 

 obtained near. Lusk, Wyoming. All of the others are from the 

 Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near Little White river. 



The earliest material obtained gave little information as to 

 the definite relation of Blastomeryx to present ruminants but 

 in the study of the later collections Mr. Matthew discovered it 

 to be a primitive deer approximately ancestral to the American 

 Cervidae and derivable in its turn from the Oligocene genus 

 Leptomeryx whose relation to the Cervidae had not before been 

 suspected. Its nearest relative structurally among the ' present 

 clay Cervidae is the musk deer. The general proportion of the 

 skull is much as in the musk deer and like that animal it has no 

 trace of horns and the upper canines are developed into long, 



Figure 18 — Restored skeleton of Blastoi7ieryx advena. After Wortman 

 1908 



slender, recurved tusks. The dentition on each side is as 

 follows : Incisors none above, three below ; canines one above 



