Of the Amphibia, the most famous foreign students were Brongniart, Jaeger, Burmeister, Von Meyer, and Owen, although Owen’s claim to eminence lies rather in the investigations of fossil reptiles which he began in 1839 and continued over a period of fifty years of remarkable achievement. Not only did he describe the dinosaurs of Great Britain in a series of splendidly illustrated monographs, but extended his researches to the curious reptilian forms from the Karroo formation of South Africa. It was to him, moreover, that the establishment of the true position of the famous Archœopteryx as the earliest known bird and not a reptile is due. Von Meyer also enriched the literature of fossil reptiles, discussing exhaustively those occurring in Germany, while Huxley’s classic work on the crocodiles as well as on dinosaurs, and the labors of Buckland, Fraas, Koken, Von Huene, Gaudry, Hulke, Seeley, and Lydekker have added immensely to our knowledge of the group.
Of the birds, which at best are rare as fossils, our knowledge, especially of the huge flightless moas, is due largely again to Owen, and his realization of the systematic position of Archœopteryx has already been mentioned.
The mammals were, perhaps, the most prolific source of paleontological research during the nineteenth century, for, as Zittel has said, Cuvier’s famous investigations on the fossil bones, mentioned above, not only contain the principles of comparative osteology, but also show in a manner which has never been surpassed how fossil vertebrates ought to be studied, and what are the broad inductions which may be drawn from a series of methodical observations. Such was Cuvier’s influence that until Darwin began to interest himself in mammalian paleontology the study of these forms was conducted entirely along the lines indicated by the French savant. This was seen in a large work, Osteology of Recent and Fossil Mammalia, by De Blainville, which, although not up to the standard set by the master, is nevertheless a notable contribution, as was also the Osteology prepared by Pander and D’Alton. A summary of the knowledge of the fossil Mammalia up to the year 1847 is contained in Giebel’s Fauna der Vorwelt, and Lydekker has done for the mammals in the British Museum what Smith Woodward did for the fishes, producing vastly more than the mere catalogue which the title implies.
The first work wherein the fossil mammals were treated genealogically was Gaudry’s Enchaînements du Monde Animal, written in 1878. Other work on the fossil Mammalia was done by Kaup, who described those from the Mainz basin and from Epplesheim near Worms whence came one of the most famous of prehistoric horses, the Hipparion; this horse, together with the remarkable proboscidean Dinotherium, was described by Von Meyer. One of the most remarkable discoveries, ranking in importance, perhaps, next to Montmartre, was that of the Pliocene fauna of Pikermi near Athens, Greece, first made known through the publications of A. Wagner of Munich and later, and much more extensively, through that of Gaudry (1862–1867). H. von Meyer was Germany’s best authority on fossil Mammalia. After his death the work was carried on by Quenstedt, Oscar Fraas, Schlosser, Koken, and Pohlig, among others.
In France, rich deposits of fossil mammals were discovered in the Department of Puy-de-Dôme, the Rhone basin, Sansan, Quercy, and near Rheims. These were described by a number of writers, notably Croizet and Jobert, Pomel, Lartet, Filhol, and Lemoine.
Rütimeyer of Bâle was one of the most famous European writers on mammalian paleontology, and his researches were both comprehensive and clothed in such form as to give them a high place in paleontological literature. He studied comparatively the teeth of ungulates, discussed the genealogy of mammals, and the relationships of those of the Old and New Worlds. He was an exponent of the law of evolution as set forth by Darwin, and his “genealogical trees of the Mammalia show a complete knowledge of all the data concerning the different members in the succession, and are amongst the finest results hitherto obtained by means of strict scientific methods of investigation” (Zittel, History of Geology and Palæontology, 1901). The mammals of the Swiss Eocene have been studied in much detail by Stehlin.
For Great Britain, the most notable contributors were Buckland in his Reliquiæ Diluvianæ; Falconer, co-author with Cautley on the Tertiary mammals of India; Charles Murchison, who wrote on rhinoceroses and proboscideans; and more recently Bush, Flower, Lydekker, Boyd Dawkins, L. Adams, and C. W. Andrews. But by far the most commanding figure of all was Sir Richard Owen, who for half a century stood without a peer as the greatest of authorities on fossil mammals. It was the Natural History of the British Fossil Mammals and Birds, published in 1846, that established Sir Richard’s reputation.
Russia has produced much mammalian material, especially from the Tertiary of Odessa and Bessarabia, and from the Quaternary of northern Russia and Siberia. These have been described mainly by J. F. Brandt, A. von Nordmann, but especially by Mme. M. Pavlow of Moscow.
Forsyth-Major discovered in 1887 a fauna contemporaneous with that of Pikermi in the Island of Samos in the Mediterranean.
One of the most remarkable recent discoveries of fossil localities was that announced in 1901 by Mr. Hugh J. L. Beadnell of the Geological Survey of Egypt and Doctor C. W. Andrews of the British Museum of London, of numerous land and sea mammals of Upper Eocene and Lower Oligocene age in northern Egypt. The exposures lay about 80 miles southwest of Cairo in the Fayûm district and are the sediments of an ancient Tertiary lake, a relic of which, Birket-el-Qurun, yet remains. These beds contained ancient Hyracoidea, Sirenia, and Zeuglodontia, but above all, ancestral Proboscidea which, together with those known elsewhere, enabled Andrews to demonstrate the origin and evolutionary features of this most remarkable group of beasts. This discovery in the Fayûm lends color to the belief that Africa may have been the ancestral home of at least five of the mammalian orders, those mentioned above, together with the Embrithopoda, a group unknown elsewhere. This theory had been advanced independently by Tullberg, Stehlin, and Osborn, before the discovery in Egypt.