“Not in America,” Antoine answered. “The bear is a very late arrival into this country. It is possible that the Cave Man in America was here as early as the Cave Bear, although there were smaller bears in Europe long before. But Procynodictis was almost a direct ancestor of the dog, although, of course, he was a good deal like a cat, too.”
“A cat and a dog at the same time,” exclaimed Perry, laughing; “that’s mixing up the breeds, sure enough.”
“There was a regular cat-dog,” the other remarked, “and cat-dogs, such as Daphaenus, were very plentiful in America during the Oligocene Period. They had the teeth and jaws of dogs or wolves, but their claws were like those of a cat and could be drawn out and in, or partly, at least.”
“How big was the one you found, Antoine?”
“My Procynodictis was just a little larger than a domestic pussy, but with a smaller body, and longer legs. That combination of dogs’ teeth and cats’ claws should have been very effective, Perry, but I suppose it was too much of a good thing. Anyway, the cat-dogs died out, when the true cats and the true dogs came on the scene.”
“It’s queer,” said Perry thoughtfully, “how that Eocene Period seems to have been a time of mixtures.”
“It was a time of mammal branchings,” the young paleontologist reminded him, “the time when the types of to-day began to diverge. What two animals look more unlike each other to-day than a cat and an otter? Yet cat-otters, then, were as plentiful as cat-dogs. They were as big as a Hyrachyus, and considerably heavier.
“Patriofelis, who despite his name was not the father of all the cats, since the latter came from a different and smaller branch, must have been a very ugly customer, Perry. There was a good deal of the ruth of tooth and claw in those Eocene times, Perry, and an animal that wanted to escape being eaten had to keep a close lookout. And, since keeping a close lookout is a matter of brains, it is easy to see why those animals which had the least brains were the most easily eaten, and so the race became extinct.”
“Yes,” agreed Perry, “that’s true yet. If you don’t use your brains, the other fellow gets ahead of you.”
“He doesn’t exactly eat you for dinner,” said the Belgian, smiling, “but he’ll eat your dinner, or eat a dinner at your expense by making you work for him. After all, that’s the whole story of development, the quickest, the brainiest animals survived; the heavy, sluggish ones died off. Look at your friend Hyrachyus, the running rhinoceros. He was just a little heavier than the three-toed horse, so Patriofelis caught and ate him when he couldn’t catch the Mesohippus.”