The Origin and Evolution of the Human Dentition (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 Excerpt: ...tarsioids, and secondly as to the divergence of the cercopithecoid and anthropoid-man stocks; although it may well be that there were other genera in existence at that time which would supplement our knowledge of the more precise interrelationships and detailed stages in the evolution of the dentition. Europe, North Africa and Eastern Asia were more than once in contact during the long mid-Tertiary ages; for we find such faunas as the Hipparion fauna of the Miocene spreading over this immense region so widely that it is often impossible to be sure in what part of the range a particular group originated. Hence there has been some doubt whether the primitive proboscideans, for example, which are found along with the above-named primates in the Lower Oligocene of Egypt, originated in North Africa or in western Asia, where somewhat more advanced forms are found in the succeeding ages. The proboscideans may have reached India from North Africa by way of Baluchistan, where successors of the Egyptian Palceomastodon have been reported by Pilgrim and by Forster-Cooper (1915, pp. 409, 410), and the primitive anthropoids may have followed the same path. On the other hand the Indian primates about to be described may have been derived from some Upper Eocene distribution center other than North Africa, such as Burma, where a characteristic Upper Eocene fauna of hoofed mammals has lately been discovered (Pilgrim and Cotter, 1916). At any rate the Middle Miocene beds of the Siwalik Hills in northern India contain teeth and fragments of jaws of three genera and four species of anthropoid apes, described originally by Pilgrim (1915), which are of the greatest importance in the problem of the origin of the modern anthropoids and even of man himself. THE MIOCENE AND PLIOCENE ...