William Boyd Dawkins

“ We have now to consider the conditions under which such an extraordinary fauna as this lived in Europe during the Pleistocene times; and the inquiry will lead us into some very interesting problems relating to the ancient climate and geography. The Pleistocene mammalia may be divided into five well-marked groups:—the first embracing those which live now in hot countries; the second those which inhabit northern regions or the tops of lofty mountains, where the cold is severe; the third those which inhabit temperate regions; a fourth those which are found alike in cold and hot ”

“ The effect of a mass of land stretching, with but a slight break at the Mediterranean area, from the range of the Atlas to the extreme north of Europe, must necessarily have tended to produce extremes of climate similar to those which we now witness in masses of land similarly situated, such as Northern Asia and North America. ”

“ The greater liability of one animal to drowning than another must be taken into consideration. For this reason the Otter, probably from its aquatic habits, is extremely rare, while the Squirrel, living in trees, would run little risk of a watery grave, and has only been found in one Pleistocene deposit in Great Britain. Altogether the following twenty-eight species of animals have left their remains to prove that they existed on the surface of the Pleistocene continent that was drained by the rivers in the deposits of which their remains have been found. ”

“ It must be borne in mind that this mode of explaining the intimate association of the mammalia of the north and south, in the same deposit of the same river, does not imply that in one season a migration took place from the head quarters of each of these groups to the extreme point to which the remains of the animals of which it is composed occur, such as the Hippopotamus from the Mediterranean as far north as Kirkdale, or the Reindeer from the north as far south as the Alps. ”

“ But it does not follow from this that the Italian deposits are synchronous with the Forest-bed; for it is almost certain that, while the arctic mammalia were invading North-eastern Europe and had taken possession of Britain and the north of France, the Pliocene fauna of the south was scarcely affected; and it is reasonable to suppose that, even while the climate of Europe was lowered to the utmost in the Glacial period, the cold was not sufficient to allow of the invasion of the southern latitudes by the Arctic group of mammalia. ”

“ Falconer never saw, and from a consideration of the associated fauna, to hold that his judgment in this case is probably correct. The objection that the animal may have been derived from newer deposits is met by the fact that the Forest-bed fauna contains no less than eighteen out of a total of twenty-six mammals which are proved to have been its contemporaries by discoveries in other places. The mammoth, as Dr. Falconer pointed out, was of an elastic constitution, so that its presence in a group of animals not now living in cold countries is not rendered improbable by its habits of life. ”

“ A waterworn frontlet of Cervus in the Museum of the Geological Society, and obtained from the "Oyster-beds" of the Norfolk coast agrees in every measurement with the above, with the sole exception that the antler is slightly smaller (a point which varies with age) . Although, therefore, the brow-tyne has been broken away, which is so important a guide to the determination of the different Cervine species, the specimen from Norfolk may be assigned to the same species. It is so like the lithograph given by Prof. Gervais (op. cit. pl. xvi. fig. 4) that it does not require a figure. ”

“ The predominance of the northern over the southern animals in Central Europe implies that the winter cold during the Pleistocene age was more severe than it is now; and this conclusion is corroborated by the condition of the river-deposits in which they are found in France and Britain. The contortions of the gravels and the angularity of the pebbles are, according to Mr. Prestwich, only explicable on the theory of ice having been formed in our rivers in far larger quantities than at the present day. ”

“ The Irish Elk ranges, in space, from Scania as far as the valley of the Po—and in time, from the Forest-bed era down to the prehistoric peat-bogs, being far more abundant in the Prehistoric than in the Pleistocene strata. It has not, however, been discovered in the latter further north than Quedlinburg, on the Continent, and Kirkdale cave, in Great Britain, although in the prehistoric deposits of Scania it is comparatively abundant (Nilsson, MSS.) . ”

“ The fossil mammalia must now be examined which inhabited Great Britain during the Early Pleistocene period, and before the maximum severity of glacial cold had as yet been reached. The fossil bones from the forest-bed which underlies the Boulder-clay on the shores of Norfolk and Suffolk, have for many years attracted the attention of naturalists and geologists. ”

“ Marsh has asserted that the Mammoth has not been found south of the Columbia river and east of the Rocky Mountains. He thought it possible that Elephas Columbi, E. armeniacus, and E. indicus might be the same species, but that E. primigenius was distinctly different. The Mammoth was more nearly allied to the Asiatic than any other elephant. He gave instances of thick- and thin-plated teeth occurring in the same district in Britain; in none did we, however, get crowns like the teeth of the Indian elephant. ”

“ In the Upper Miocenes it becomes more complex, but is still small and erect, like that of the Roe. In the Pliocene it becomes larger and longer, and altogether more complex and differentiated, some forms, such as the Cervus dicranios of Nesti, being the most complicated antlers known either in the living or fossil state. These successive changes are analogous to those which are to be observed in the development of the antlers in the living Deer, which begin with a simple point and increase their number of tynes until their limit be reached. ”

“ During the Middle Pleistocene in the Thames valley, and at Clacton, the Woolly Rhinoceros, Elephant and Mammoth, competed for the same feeding-grounds with Rhinoceros hemitœchus, R. megarhinus, Hippopotamus, and Elephas antiquus. Although all the characteristic Pliocene Cervidæ had retreated, the Reindeer had not yet invaded that area: it was occupied by the Stag, the Roe, the Irish Elk, and Cervus Browni. ”

“ Relation to Indian Elephant.
The next point to be considered is the relation of the mammoth to the Indian elephant on the other side of the barrier of deserts and mountains of Central Asia. On analyzing all the characters of the dentition, wo find that the ridge-formula and the succession of the teeth are the same, and that the last grinders are so alike that a lower molar of E. indicus has been figured by one of our most distinguished anatomists as that of a mammoth [23] . ”

“ It would, of course, be unreasonable to expect that the remains of all the animals inhabiting the country at the time would be present in one small river-deposit, and still more improbable that they would all be discovered in the small area which happens to be open for examination. By correlating, however, the animals from many localities, a fair estimate can be obtained of the whole fauna. ”

“ Both bodies of deer extended further than the eye could reach, and formed a compact mass narrowing towards the front. They moved slowly and majestically along, their broad antlers resembling a moving wood of leafless trees. Each body was led by a deer of unusual size, which my guides assured me was always a female. ”

“ The remains of the animal occur throughout Russian Asia; and the singular notice of fossil ivory being brought for sale at Khiva, by an enterprising Arabian traveller, Abou-el-Cassim, in the middle of the tenth century, applies to the mammoth from the old Bulgaria on the Lower Volga [19] .
Nor is a variety of the mammoth absent from Asia Minor, since the remains of an elephant (E. armeniacus) , discovered near Erzeroum, have been determined by Dr. Falconer to be intermediate between the mammoth and the Indian elephant. ”

“ Migration of Bison at different season from that of Reindeer.—A careful examination of the young teeth of the Bisons and Rein- deer has further led me to conclude that these two animals migrated through the pass of the Winnetts and over Windy Knoll at different times of the year. The unworn milk-molars and the germ of milk- teeth of the former animal prove that calves not more than three or four months old formed part of the herds, which consequently must have been in that district within three or four months of calving-time, or May—in other words, in the summer and autumn. ”

“ The difficulty, however, offered by this conflict of testimony vanishes away, if we examine the conditions under which animals migrate from one area to another, according to the season. Sir John Franklin writes that the migrations of the animals in North America afford a means of foretelling the severity of the season. If the Reindeer retreat far south, then a severe winter is to be apprehended; if, on the contrary, they remain very nearly in their usual winter haunts, the season invariably is a mild one. The Reindeer of Northern Russia are equally dependent upon the season for their locality ”

“ If the Pleistocene mammalia be compared with those of the Pliocene strata of Auvergne, Montpellier, and the Val d'Arno, it will be seen that the following animals were not known in Europe before the Pleistocene age.
The African Elephant and the Pentlands small Hippopotamus are added by the caves of Sicily, and the pigmy Elephants and the gigantic Dormouse by those of Malta. ”

“ Our present imperfect knowledge renders it impossible to subdivide the latest stage of the Pleistocene by means of the Mammalia, although the archæologists may be able to establish a rude sequence based on a comparison of the implements and weapons found in caves and the deposits of rivers. This principle of classification by the relative rudeness of such remains presupposes that the progress of man had been gradual, and that the rudest implements and weapons are the oldest. ”

“ The probability also is considerably strengthened by the fact of its being proved to have been an inhabitant of Britain before the Glacial period, from the above-mentioned discoveries in the south and west of England and in Scotland.
6. The Mammoth in Britain before, during, and after the Glacial period.
In the late Pleistocene deposits of Britain the mammoth is the most abundant animal, being found in eighty-two cases out of 148 localities tabulated [14] in an essay brought before this Society in 1869, and very generally along with the reindeer. ”

“ These middle sands in their turn are capped by the upper Boulder-clay of Newton, Fairfield, and Droylesden to the east of Manchester. The Boulder-clay of Northwich, therefore, is the lower of the two Boulder-clays of the Lancashire and Cheshire plain, and the sand beneath it with the mammoth belongs to a yet earlier age, or, in other words, is older than the first phase of the Glacial period, of which traces have been met with on the western side of the Pennine chain. ”

“ The difference between these antlers is so very slight that I feel inclined to view their possessors as homologous species, using the term so happily employed by Dr. Heer to denote a lineal ancestry. In the Dicroceros of the Middle Miocenes we find the antler at a minimum of development, consisting merely of a forked crown springing directly from the burr, while in the Deer of the Upper Miocene the forked crown is separated from the burr by a short beam ”

“ The possession of hair and wool depends, to a large extent, on climate, so that the covering of the Siberian mammoth cannot be taken to be a specific character.
On the present evidence the two seem to me to be so closely related that the mammoth may be taken as the ancestor of the Indian elephant ”

“ The antlers (including one of the typical specimens of Croizet and Jobert preserved in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and referable to the above species or form) are all small, and are as closely allied to Cervus pardinensis as the Axis is to the Rusa. It is, however, safer, in the present imperfect state of our knowledge, to keep them separate.
Definition.—Antlers (fig. 6) possessed of a graceful double curvature, and with three tynes; grooved basally; burr at right angles to long axis of pedicle; pedicle short ”

“ And although the earliest traces of man found in the river-deposits of Great Britain can be proved from their position to be of Post-boulder-clay age, the Brick-earth of Crayford excepted, it by no means follows that those which have been furnished by the caves of the south of England, or of the south of Prance, are also of the same age ”

“ The third tyne (E) like the second, springs at right angles, but is suddenly reflected at a point 5⋅4 inches from the beam to terminate in a round point 7⋅8 inches from the obtuse angle of reflection in the figured specimens. These characters are presented by three antlers. In the antler of six years old (fig. 17) all the tynes spring at right angles to the beam, and the second (D) , third (E) , and fourth (F) are gently reflected, the curvature being the greatest in the fourth tyne. These characters are presented also by three other antlers. ”