A history of land mammals in the western hemisphere

by William Berryman Scott

There were two orders of hoofed mammals, which were newcomers to the western world, Perissodactyla and Artiodactyla. Of the former was a genus (†Eohippus) of the most ancient American horses. These most interesting little animals, no larger than small foxes and domestic cats, would hardly be called horses, were it not for the long series of gradual and successive modifications which led from †Eohippus up to the modern horses. The graceful little creatures had a short neck, curved back, and relatively short, slender limbs, with four functional toes in the front foot and three in the hind; and, though they differed from existing horses in almost every detail of teeth and skeleton, there was something unmistakably equine about them. From the abundance of their remains it may be inferred that herds of them swarmed in the forests and glades of Wasatch times. The second perissodactyl family, the †Lophiodontidæ, which comprised considerably larger animals, never attained to importance in America, but flourished and became greatly diversified in Europe. What are believed to be the most ancient tapirs yet discovered (†Systemodon) were individually very common in the Wasatch. This tapir was no larger than a Coyote, had no proboscis and was so little like a tapir in outward appearance that an observer might well be pardoned for overlooking the relationship; even the skeleton is of so indifferent a character that the reference of this genus to the tapirs cannot be positively made.

Of equal significance for the future was the arrival of the Artiodactyla, of which there were members of three families in the Wasatch, though individually they were much less common than the horses. These were geologically the oldest known artiodactyls, Europe having yielded none of this date, and are still too imperfectly known to justify any very positive statements about them. One genus, however (†Trigonolestes), tiny little creatures, like rabbits in size, would seem to represent the beginnings of the great ruminant tribe, now so very important a factor in the life of the world. A second genus (†Eohyus), considerably larger, is very doubtfully referable to the pigs; while a third (†Parahyus), still larger, was the first in the short-faced series of the †entelodonts, which persisted in ever increasing size through the whole Eocene, but could hardly have been ancestral to the true †entelodonts, or †giant-pigs, of the Oligocene, the place and time of whose origin are unknown.

Another immigrant order of great interest, since we ourselves belong to it, the Primates, made its first appearance in North America in the Wasatch, but was not destined to long life or great importance in this continent, where it did not survive the Eocene. Several different kinds of small, lemur-like and monkey-like creatures dwelt in the tree-tops of the Wasatch forests. One genus (†Anaptomorphus) had a remarkable likeness to the modern Tarsier (Tarsius spectrum) of the Malay peninsula and islands.

South America.—The Eocene of South America, referred by some writers to the upper Cretaceous, is very incompletely and unsatisfactorily known. The Casa Mayor formation (or Notostylops Beds), which has yielded a great variety of mammals, for the most part very fragmentary, probably contains not one but several successive faunas which have not yet been fully discriminated, and that of the next succeeding Astraponotus Beds is still but a scanty list. This list, however, includes the most ancient †glyptodonts yet discovered and the most ancient †astrapotheres in the narrow sense of the term. The Astraponotus Beds may be either Eocene or Oligocene in date.

Taking the Casa Mayor faunas as a whole, they were a very numerous and diversified assemblage of small mammals, without a single large one among them. There were no monkeys or rodents; otherwise, the orders were in almost all cases the same as those which made up the Santa Cruz fauna. The marsupials were represented by the opossums and by several of the carnivorous kinds, the only beasts of prey that South America had until the migrations from the north brought in the true Carnivora, late in the Miocene or very early in the Pliocene. There were also numerous small marsupials of peculiar type, of which the last living survivor is Cænolestes, of Ecuador. Throughout the stage, armadillos were present in considerable variety, but are known only from the bony plates of the carapace, and therefore little can be determined as to their relationships to the modern families. Only a single and very problematical genus of the †ground-sloths, which afterwards throve so mightily in the Miocene and Pliocene, has been obtained and that in the later portion of the stage.

The orders of hoofed mammals were represented by many small animals, most of which are known only from the teeth, which show these Casa Mayor genera to have been far more primitive and less specialized than their descendants in the Deseado and Santa Cruz stages. All of them had the low-crowned grinding teeth of the browsers, and no grazers were then in existence, so far as is known. No †toxodonts, in the more restricted sense of that term, have been found, but the two allied suborders of the †Typotheria and †Entelonychia were numerously represented. Of the former there were two families and of the latter three, which is more than in the Deseado or Santa Cruz formations. One of the families of the †Entelonychia (†Notostylopidæ) consisted of very small, rodent-like animals, with a pair of chisel-shaped incisors in upper and lower jaw, and a second family (†Homalodontotheriidæ) contained genera which would seem to have been directly ancestral to those of the Santa Cruz, but were very much smaller than their successors. The very large and massive †Pyrotheria of the Deseado stage were represented by small animals, in which the grinding teeth had two pairs of conical tubercles, not yet united into transverse crests. Two families of the †astrapotheres, in the broad sense, were far smaller than their Oligocene and Miocene descendants. To the †Litopterna are referred a number of genera, in which the grinding teeth were tuberculated and had very imperfectly developed crests, so as strongly to suggest the teeth of the †Condylarthra. However, until something is ascertained regarding the skeleton, especially the feet, of these animals, their relationships will remain more or less doubtful.

It will be observed that these Casa Mayor faunas not only were made up exclusively of small animals, but also that they already were typically and characteristically South American and bore the stamp which remained essentially the same until the successive waves of migration from the north so greatly modified the composition of the Neotropical fauna. The absence of rodents and monkeys and the comparative unimportance of the Edentata gave a somewhat different character to these ancient faunas from those of the Santa Cruz and later formations.

5. Paleocene

North America.—A very important discovery is one lately made by American Museum parties of a formation intermediate between the Wasatch and Torrejon. The interesting fauna of these beds has not yet been described, but it may be remarked that it contained none of the immigrant orders.