Les Enchaînements du Monde Animal dans les Temps Géologiques, Mammijères, Tertiares

Abstract

UNDER this poetic title Prof. Gaudry has added one more to his valuable works on the fossil mammalia of the Tertiary Period. Some sixteen years ago he carried on the explorations on the classic ground of Pikermi, which proved that the plains of Marathon were haunted by antelopes, gazelles, giraffes, and hipparions, in the upper miocene age, while the forests then overshadowing rocky Attica sheltered the mastodon and rhinoceros, and yielded food to innumerable monkeys (Mesopithecus) allied to the Barbary ape. During the last five years he has been painting a like picture of the upper miocene mammalia of Mont Léberon, in which, as in Pikermi, the remains of the animals are preserved in an abundance and a perfection somewhat like those discovered in the Western States, by Prof. Marsh. The two elaborate quartos on these discoveries are now followed by an elegant octavo full of woodcuts, treating of the links that bind together some of the more important groups of tertiary and living mammalia. In it the author deals with the European mammalia without treating exhaustively the accumulation of facts brought to light by Marsh, Hayden, Leidy, and others, in the American eocenes and miocenes. Norare these as yet published in sufficient detail to allow of their being worked into the book before us. The impression made upon my mind by the vast stores of remains in the museum at Yale is one of profound melancholy; for so numerous and varied are the mammalia that many years must elapse before they can be brought into complete relation with those of Europe. Up to the present time the fragmentary notices which have appeared bear the same relation to the systematic treatment to be expected from Prof. Marsh, that isolated tesseræ bear to the whole design of a mosaic. Prof. Gaudry, therefore, has acted well in confining his work mainly to the Tertiary mammalia of Europe.

Les Enchaînements du Monde Animal dans les Temps Géologiques, Mammijères, Tertiares.

Par Albert Gaudry. 8vo. (Paris: F. Savy, 1878.)