EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT. 
9 
AFRICAN FAUNA. 
In this connection, the origin of the South African animals 
may be briefly referred to. Madagascar has a peculiar fauna 
resulting from long isolation, but the ancestral types came from 
■ Africa, where, in later times, most of these particular animals 
have died out. 
It had long been supposed that the lemurs, the pangolins, the 
aardvarks, and some other types, were the only remnants of this 
original fauna, and that the typical large mammals of Africa 
originated in Eurasia, and were driven south into Africa by the 
advance of the glaciers in comparatively recent times. Recent 
investigations, however, have demonstrated the fallacy of this 
view, and at present the best authorities concur in viewing Africa, 
south of the Sahara, or the Ethiopian region, as having expe- 
rienced a radiation of large mammals, quite peculiar to itself, 
but which took place after the separation of Madagascar.* 
That the elephants originated in Africa has been demonstrated 
by the recent discovery in Egypt of fossil forms, clearly ances- 
tral to the modern Probosicidians. The Sirenia, the hyrax, the 
hippopotamus, and related swine, the giraffe, and the wonderful 
group of bovine antelopes in all probability attained their devel- 
opment in* Africa, and, possibly all of the Bovidae originated 
there also. In Pliocene and Lower Pleistocene times many of 
these forms pushed north, in some cases as far as England, there 
becoming extinct or retreating into Africa again upon the ad- 
vance of the glaciers, but leaving behind in Europe and Asia, 
some of their members, which successfully adjusted themselves 
to temperate or subarctic conditions. 
PREGLACIAL FAUNA OF AMERICA. 
During these same periods before the approach of the glaciers 
a magnificent fauna flourished in North America, consisting of 
camels, horses, ground sloths, elephants, mastodons, sabre- 
toothed tigers, and others, including distinct forest and plains 
faunae, but few of these animals seem to have survived the great 
glaciers. One of the survivors was the mastodon, which, origi- 
* This hypothesis was first fully set forth by Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn, 
before the New York Academy of Science in 1900, and has been more than con- 
firmed by the explorations of the Egyptian Geological Survey, published by 
Andrews & Beadnell. 
