Abstract
AT the beginning of the Tertiary period, when omammals began to spread widely over the world, they were all very small and so uniform in character that it is scarcely possible to classify them into groups or orders. They all had a comparatively small brain of a simple kind, and as in course of time they became gradually subdivided into the groups with which we are now familiar, the brain increased both in size and effectiveness, while many of the animals themselves grew larger. In the middle and towards the end of the earliest Tertiary (Eocene) epoch some of the low-brained hoofed mammals attained their greatest size and then became extinct. Next in the Oligocene another group with somewhat improved brain grew even larger just before extermination.
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WOODWARD, A. The Antiquity of Man. Nature 104, 212–213 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/104212a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/104212a0