On Some Fossil Remains of Anoplotherium and Giraffe; From the Sewalik Hills, in the North of India (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: which now skirts the foot of the Himalayahs, it would soon have been exterminated by the large feline ferae, by the hyaenas, and large predaceous bears which are known to have been members of the old Sewalik fauna. Postscript. Since the above remarks were submitted to the Society, M. Duvernoy-s paper, embodying two communications read to the Academy of Sciences on the 19th May and 27th November last, has appeared in the January Number of the - Annales des Sciences Na- turelles.- These notices were published in the - Comptes Rendus, - but were unknown to the authors at the time. M. Duvernoy describes the lower jaw of a fossil giraffe found in the bottom of a well, lying on the surface of a yellow clay, along with fragments of pottery and domestic utensils, in the court of an ancient donjon of the 14th century in the town of Isoodun, Departement de i-Indre. Considerable doubt remains as to the bed and source whence the fossil was derived. M. Duvernoy attributes the jaw to a distinct species of giraffe, which he names Camelopardalis Biturigum. Professor Owen, from the examination of a cast, confirms the result, expressing his conviction " that in the more essential characters the Isoodun fossil closely approaches the genus Giraffe, but differs strikingly from the (single) existing species of the south and east of Africa, and that the deviations tend towards the subgenus Elk." M. Duvernoy also mentions the discovery of a tooth in the mo- lasse near Neufchatel, by M. Nicolet, determined by M. Agassiz to be the outer incisor of a fossil giraffe. (Duvernoy, Annales des Sciences Naturelles, No. for January 1844.) References to the Figures in the Plates. Plate II. Fig. 1. Anoplotherium Sivalense; left upper jaw with the teeth seen from above; (a a' a") the conical cusp. 2. Di...