1912] Miller: Pacific Coast Avian Palaeontology 



109 



to represent the family among the Cathartiformes. How late 

 did this great bird persist, and did that important factor, man, 

 have anything to do with his disappearance? According to Dr. 

 C. Hart Merriam, 41 the Me-wah Indians of California have a 

 legend concerning a gigantic vulture, Yel-lo-kin, so large that 

 he was able to capture the condor and carry him up through a 

 hole in the sky. The bird myths of these Indians indicate a close 

 acquaintance with the California species. It may be that Tera- 

 tornis persisted until the arrival of man upon the scene, and thus 

 gave rise to the Mew-wah Indian myth of Yel-lo-kin. 



Granting the possible truth of such an assumption as the con- 

 temporaneity of man and Teratornis, the primitive human animal 

 could have had but little cause to direct his efforts against the 

 large raptorial birds. His meagre offensive armament would 

 probably have availed him but little in any event. Thus the 

 only influence he would have been likely to exert would be but 

 the indirect effect through the extermination of large mammals. 

 The possibility of man's having exerted any such influence on 

 the lives of avian species seems remote, in view of the negative 

 evidence afforded by the absence thus far of human remains 

 from western horizons of undoubted Pleistocene age. 



Direct extermination, or the sharpening of competition, by 

 incursions of Old World forms, is a theory without the support 

 of any tangible evidence in the case of birds. The procyonids 

 and Didelphys are of long standing in America. Felines would 

 greatly influence the larger birds by direct attack either upon 

 the bird or its nest. It seems highly improbable, then, that 

 birds could have been directly influenced by man or the other 

 mammals, but that the chief relation of mammals to the large 

 birds was in the dependence of the latter upon the former for 

 food-supply. 



As has been pointed out in an earlier paper, 42 the large rap- 

 torial birds depended in a dual respect upon the large mammals. 

 First, these birds fed upon the bodies of either carnivores or 

 herbivores dying of whatever cause ; second, the vulture fed upon 

 the rejected portion of the carnivore's kill. Thus, any factor 



41 Merriam, C. H., The Dawn of the World, p. 163, 1910. 



42 Miller, L. H., Univ. Calif. Pub!., Bull. Dept. Geo!., vol. 6, p. 2, 1910. 



