GENUS SEMNOPITHECUS (suprà, p. [100]).
Among the forests in which bamboos, liquidambars, tulip-trees, magnolias, laurels, and pomegranates flourished in Upper Pliocene days, in the middle of Europe, there lived troops of Langurs, closely allied to those of our own time. Semnopithecus monspessulanus, Gervais, has been recovered from the strata of that age, at Montpellier, and near Casino in Tuscany. S. palæindicus (Lydekker) inhabited the forests in the region where the Sivalik hills now rise at the foot of the Himalayas, while S. entellus roamed over that region in the Pleistocene age, as its actual descendants do to-day.
FAMILY SIMIIDÆ (suprà, p. [143]).
GENUS PLIOPITHECUS.
Pliopithecus, Gervais, C. R., xliii., p. 221 (1856); id., Zool. et Pal. Franc., p. 8 (1859); Forsyth Major, Atti. Soc. Ital. Sc. Nat., xv., p. 82 (1872); Zittel, Handb. Palæont., p. 708 (1893).
Protopithecus, Ed. Lartet (nec Lund), Ann. Dep. Gers., 1851, p. 11.
This genus is very nearly allied to Hylobates, but differs from it in the form and proportions of its teeth. The genus is based on a lower jaw found in the Mid-Miocene of Central Europe. The incisors are small and long; the canines strong and but little taller than the incisors; the pre-molars are low, the anterior having one cusp, and the next two cusps; the molars have two pairs of opposite short, thick, conical cusps, with an additional one on the hind border, which enlarges into a talon in the hindmost of the set. The type species, Pliopithecus antiquus, which very closely resembles the Gibbons, lived in the luxuriant forests of Sansan (Gers), and a variety of it, described as P. chantrei, Depéret, inhabited the woods round Mont Ceindre. Remains of the same animals have been obtained in the Brown-coal beds of Elgg, in Switzerland and Göriach, in Steyermark.
GENUS HYLOBATES (suprà, p. [148]).
True Gibbons, indistinguishable from those now living in the island, have been found in the caves of Borneo.
A finely preserved limb-bone, from the Eppelsheim beds of the Pliocene age, has also been ascribed to a species of this genus.