1880.] 



History of the Fossil Vertebrata in India. 



11 



indicating the former existence of a small number of species ; while of 

 the more specialized and bird-like dinosam's of those countries, we have as 

 yet no trace in India ; neither of the toothed birds, which present so 

 remarkable a feature in the secondary epoch of America, are there any 

 vestiges in India. The numerous species of the volant and toothed 

 pterodactyls of Eiirope, and of their toothless representatives in America, 

 are also totally unknown from Indian strata. 



Of the gigantic estuarine or marine saurians, so characteristic of the 

 secondaries of Europe and America, Indian strata have liitherto only yielded 

 a few remains of a single Iclithyosnurus and Plesiosaurus. Of the lower 

 batrachians, only a few species are known from the (probably) Triassic 

 rocks of India, and the great number of species so characteristic of the 

 Carboniferous and Trias of Europe are almost totally unrepresented in this 

 country. The marine fish fauna is likewise remarkable for its general 

 poverty.* 



It must, however, be observed that many of the vertebrates which do 

 occur arc only known by a single skull, or a tooth, or a few bones or 

 scutes, and it, therefore, seems probable that many other species must have 

 left similarly scattered remains througli the strata of India, which from 

 their cxti-cmely local distribution have hitherto escaped detection. 



No distinctly recognizable traces of mammals have been as yet de- 

 tected in India below the Nummulitic rocks, and in the latter only by a 

 few generically undeterminable bones ; indeed, we meet with no well- 

 developed mammalian fauna till the period of the Upper Miocene and 

 Lower Pliocene, when we suddenly come upon the evidence of the former 

 existence of a vast and varied fauna which is, probably as numerically 

 abundant in its species and genera as any known fossil fauna in the world. 

 Previous to the Tertiary, the whole history of mammalian life in India 

 is a complete blank. The bird-fauna of India, with a few exceptions, is 

 almost totally unknown previously to the present epoch. 



The above remarks have an important negative bearing on evolution. 

 We know that the greater part of the peninsula of India has existed as land 

 for an incalculable period of geological time, — at all events from the Triassic 

 epoch, and we further know that in other regions mammals have existed on 

 the globe since the Triassic, and birds since the Jurassic, period. As regards 

 the above two groups of vertebrates, India throws not a single ray of light 

 on their origin. We have not a trace of any one of the curious generalized 

 forms of the Eocene mammals of North America in the strata of India, 

 and yet wo cannot tliink that ancient India was almost without mam- 

 malian life till tlic upper Miocene. It is indeed probable that the lost 



* Miu'iiic roclcs .arc absent over most parts of peninsular India, tlioiigli present in 

 force in Tricliinopoli, Kach, Sind, and the Himalaya. 



