The History of the European Fauna

by R. F. Scharff

Fig. 10.—Head of a Barren-ground Reindeer in the Dublin Museum (photographed by Mr. McGoogan).

Fig. 11.—Head of a Woodland Reindeer in the Dublin Museum (photographed by Mr. McGoogan).

We have, therefore, records of the present or the former existence of a Reindeer resembling the North American Barren-ground form in Greenland, Spitsbergen, Scandinavia, Ireland, and the South of France. In England the remains of the two forms occur mixed, but I do not know in how far either the one or the other predominates. The Barren-ground Reindeer is in Europe altogether confined to the west; the most easterly locality that I am acquainted with being Rixdorf, near Berlin. The majority of the European remains of the Reindeer seem to belong to the Siberian or Woodland variety, and it would appear as if some intercrossing between the two forms had occurred in Lapland, since it is stated that in that country the Reindeer is somewhat intermediate between the two. All the Asiatic remains also resemble the Woodland variety.

As far as I know, no explanation has been attempted to account for this peculiar range in Europe of the two forms of Reindeer. But if we look more closely into the mode of occurrence of the Reindeer remains, we find that the Barren-ground form, seems to have existed in Western Europe long before the other variety made its appearance there. It was pointed out by Struckmann that the Reindeer in Southern Europe occurs in older deposits than in the north. In speaking of the northern ones, he had of course chiefly the German deposits in view. It is in one of the oldest pleistocene deposits in Germany that the isolated instance, referred to above, of the occurrence of the Barren-ground Reindeer, near Berlin, has been noted.

There is still a further point which illustrates the supposition that the Barren-ground Reindeer was a more ancient inhabitant of Europe than the Woodland one. The latter in all Central European stations (in fact almost wherever it occurs fossil) is associated with the remains of the typical inhabitants of Siberia, such as the Glutton, Sousliks, Lemmings, and others; but in the deposits in which the Barren-ground Reindeer have been found in South-western France, no other Arctic mammal finds a place. Again, in Irish deposits none of the Siberian migrants are found. The only explanation of this remarkable fact is that the two varieties of the Reindeer have come to Europe by different routes. We have learned already from the observations of Mr. Murray that there are evidences of the existence of a former land-connection between North America, Greenland, and Spitsbergen. Professor Petersen tells us that, according to recent surveys, a high submarine plateau with a sharp fall of 1000 fathoms towards the Atlantic Ocean begins from Northern Norway and is continued as far as Spitsbergen. Several islands, such as Bear Island, King Charles Land, and others, arise from this plateau, and these must be looked upon as the remains of a sunken land ([Fig. 12]).

From Arctic America, thinks Professor Schulz (p. 1), we probably have had an uninterrupted migration during the greater part of later Tertiary times up to the commencement of the Pliocene epoch—partly over a direct land-connection between Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroes, and also between Arctic America, Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land, etc. There was also a connection between Asia and Alaska.

The distribution of the Barren-ground Reindeer in Europe seems to warrant the belief that, at the time it began its southward wanderings from the Polar area, Northern Norway must have been connected with Greenland in the manner just indicated, but, as I shall explain later on, Russian Lapland and part of Northern Russia, or the land between the White Sea and the Baltic, must at that time have been submerged by the sea. The greater part of Denmark and the lowlands of Sweden were likewise submerged, but Scandinavia extended south as far as Scotland, while Scotland was connected with Ireland, and the latter with England and France. The Reindeer migrating south into Scandinavia could only reach the continent of Europe by way of the British Islands. It appeared there in the west and gradually extended its range east, where, as I mentioned above, it has occurred in a few isolated localities.

The advent of the Woodland form of the Reindeer in Europe took place at a much later stage. It came, as I indicated, with the hordes of Siberian migrants which invaded Europe during what is known as the Inter-glacial phase of the Glacial period. Scandinavia, not being then directly connected with continental Europe, was not accessible to it; neither was Ireland, which had by that time become disconnected from Great Britain. None of the Siberian migrants seem to have been able to cross the River Garonne, and we therefore find neither the Woodland Reindeer nor any of the typical Siberian species represented in the Pyrenean deposits.