The natural method of telling a story is to begin at the beginning and go on to the end, but to deal in that manner with the many different assemblages of mammals which have in turn inhabited the western hemisphere has the great drawback of beginning with a time when everything was utterly strange to the modern eye. Could the reader be carried back to the far distant days of the Paleocene epoch, he would find himself in a completely unfamiliar world; and there is therefore a real practical advantage in reversing the story and starting with the end and thus proceeding gradually from the more to the less familiar. The foregoing chapter gave a sketch of the more striking and characteristic mammals which inhabit the Americas to-day, and we may now take a step backward to the epoch immediately preceding our own, the Pleistocene.

As was shown in Chapter V, the Pleistocene was a time of many and great climatic vicissitudes, periods of cold, when the northern part of the continent was buried under great ice-sheets, alternating with far milder periods, when the climate was much as at present, or even warmer. These climatic changes necessitated many changes in the distribution of animals and plants, increasing cold driving them southward, while the return of more genial conditions permitted the northward migration of southern forms. The effects of these changes of climate are still plainly visible in the geographical arrangement of living beings in the northern continents and many anomalies of distribution, otherwise inexplicable, are thus made clear. Attention was long ago directed to the fact that the tops of high mountains support a flora and fauna which, on the lowlands, will be found only hundreds, or even thousands, of miles to the northward. The plants which grow on the summits of the White Mountains of New Hampshire recur in Labrador, but not in the intervening area; the vegetation and animals of the high Alps are those of the Arctic regions, and many similar instances might be cited. Hooker and Darwin were the first to find a highly probable explanation of this curious phenomenon by referring it to the climatic changes of the Pleistocene epoch. During the last period of cold and glaciation, the northern plants and animals were driven far to the south and occupied the lowlands along the ice-front and well beyond it; when milder conditions gradually returned, the northern forms not only retreated northward, but also ascended the mountains, as the latter were freed from ice, and thus became cut off as isolated colonies. The general explanation of “discontinuous distribution” (see p. 138) is thus always the same, viz., that the intervening regions were once occupied by the forms now so widely separated, which, for one reason or another, have vanished from the connecting areas.

I. Quaternary Faunas

North America.—The Quaternary faunas of North America are extremely difficult to correlate and place in chronological order, because, for the most part, they are found in locally restricted areas, such as tar-pools, bogs, caverns and similar places. Professor Osborn has, however, succeeded in making an admirable arrangement, which, though it will doubtless be corrected and expanded by future research, represents a most important advance. Of the general problem he says: “The study of the mammals of the Quaternary has by no means progressed so far in America as in Europe; it will be many years before the faunistic succession can be worked out with such chronologic accuracy and precision as has at last been attained by European geologists and palæontologists.” According to Osborn’s arrangement, there are three principal successive Pleistocene faunas, two of which appear to have coincided with interglacial stages, and the third with the last reëstablishment of glacial conditions on a grand scale. Regarding the details of these faunas, there still remains much uncertainty, and consequently there will be no attempt made here to do more than discriminate between the general Pleistocene assemblage, on the one hand, and that of the last cold period, on the other. It must be emphasized that we are as yet unable to assert that all of the animals listed together were actually living at the same time.

It is probable that the Pleistocene fossils already obtained give us a fairly adequate conception of the larger and more conspicuous mammals of the time, but no doubt represent very incompletely the small and fragile forms. With all its gaps, however, the record is very impressive; “the early and mid-Pleistocene life of North America is the grandest and most varied assemblage of the entire Cenozoic Period [i.e. era] of our continent” (Osborn). There is the further advantage that the fossils have been gathered over a very great area, extending from ocean to ocean and from Alaska to Central America. Thus, their wide geographical range represents nearly all parts of the continent and gives us information concerning the mammals of the great forests, as well as of the great plains.

Those divisions of the early and middle Pleistocene which enjoyed milder climatic conditions had an assemblage of mammals which, from one point of view, seems very modern, for most of the genera, and even many of the species, which now inhabit North America, date back to that time. From the geographical standpoint, however, this is a very strange fauna, for it contains so many animals now utterly foreign to North America, to find near relatives of which we should have to go to Asia or South America. Some of these animals which now seem so exotic, such as the llamas, camels and horses, were yet truly indigenous and were derived from a long line of ancestors which dwelt in this continent, but are now scattered abroad and extinct in their original home, while others were migrants that for some unknown reason failed to maintain themselves. Others again are everywhere extinct.

Most surprising, perhaps, in a North American landscape, is the presence of the Proboscidea, of which two very distinct kinds, the †mastodons and the true elephants, are found together. Over nearly the whole of the United States and southern Canada, and even with sporadic occurrence in Alaska, ranged the †American Mastodon (†Mastodon americanus) which was rare in the plains, but very abundant in the forested regions, where it persisted till a very late period and was probably known to the early Indians. This animal, while nearly related to the true elephants, was yet quite different from them in appearance, as will be immediately seen on comparing 1 and 4, Fig. 113, p. 195. The most obvious external difference was the comparative shortness of the legs in the †Mastodon, which did not exceed and seldom attained a height of 9 ft. 6 in. at the shoulder; the head also was lower and more flattened. The teeth were very different from those of the elephants; the grinding teeth were much smaller and simpler, being low-crowned and rooted and having three or four high, transverse, enamel-covered crests, without cement. The tusks were elephant-like except that in the male there was a single small tusk in the lower jaw, which cannot have been visible externally; this is a remnant of an earlier stage of development, when there were two large tusks in the lower as well as the upper jaw. The creature was covered with long, coarse, dun-coloured hair; such hair has been found with some of the skeletons.

Of true elephants, the North American Pleistocene had three species. Most interesting of these is the northern or Siberian †Mammoth (Elephas †primigenius), a late immigrant from northern Asia, which came in by way of Alaska, where Bering Land (as we may call the raised bed of Bering Sea) connected it with Asia. The †Mammoth was abundant in Alaska, British Columbia and all across the northern United States to the Atlantic coast. Hardly any fossil mammal is so well known as this, for the carcasses entombed in the frozen gravels of northern Siberia have preserved every detail of structure. It is thus definitely known that the †Mammoth was well adapted to a cold climate and was covered with a dense coat of wool beneath an outer coating of long, coarse hair, while the contents of the stomach and the partially masticated food found in the mouth show that the animal fed upon the same vegetation as grows in northern Siberia to-day. The grinding teeth were very high, cement-covered, and composed of many thin plates of enamel, dentine and cement, and were closely similar to those of the existing Indian Elephant (E. maximus). In size this is the smallest of the three Pleistocene species, 9 feet at the shoulder. The †Mammoth was not peculiar to Siberia and North America, but extended also into Europe, where it was familiar to Palæolithic Man, as is attested by the spirited and lifelike carvings and cave-paintings of that date. Thus, during some part of the Pleistocene, this species ranged around the entire northern hemisphere.

Closely related to the †Mammoth and in some cases hardly distinguishable from it, is the †Columbian Elephant (E. †columbi) which, however, attained a considerably larger size, as much as 11 feet, rivalling the largest African elephants of the present time. The head was very high and had a curiously peaked appearance, and the tusks in old males curved inward, overlapping at the tips. From the likeness in teeth and skeleton to the †Mammoth, it may be inferred, though somewhat doubtfully, that the †Columbian Elephant was clothed with hair, but not so heavily as the †Mammoth, which was a northern species, the Columbian form replacing it southward, and ranging over the whole United States, including Florida and even throughout the table-land of Mexico. The areas of the two species overlapped along the northernmost United States, but are elsewhere distinct.

A third species was the huge †Imperial Elephant (E. †imperator), the largest of American forms, to which Osborn’s calculations give the almost incredible height of 13 ft. 6 in. This great creature was characterized not only by its enormous stature, but also by the proportionately very large size of its grinding teeth, and was a survivor from the preceding Pliocene epoch; it is not known to have passed beyond the middle Pleistocene and was thus the first of the species to become extinct. In geographical range, the †Imperial Elephant was a western form, extending from the Pacific coast almost to the Mississippi River, east of which it has never been found, and from Nebraska southward to the City of Mexico. The meaning of this distribution is probably that this elephant shunned the forests and was especially adapted to a life on the open plains. Over most of its area the winters were severe, and this fact makes it likely that the animal was clothed with hair, but nothing is definitely known on this point.

Many other hoofed animals, far more than now inhabit North America, are found in this Pleistocene fauna. The Perissodactyla were represented by horses and tapirs, but not by rhinoceroses; it might seem superfluous to say that there were no rhinoceroses, but, as a matter of fact, that family had a long and varied American history and became extinct only during or at the end of the Pliocene epoch. The horses were extremely numerous, both individually and specifically, and ranged, apparently in great herds, all over Mexico and the United States and even into Alaska. All the known species (at least ten in number) belong to the genus Equus, but the True Horse (E. caballus), to which all the domestic breeds are referred, is not represented. The smallest known member of the genus is the pygmy E. †tau of Mexico. E. †fraternus, likewise a very small species, is found especially in the southeast, but extended as far north as Pennsylvania and west to Nebraska. On the other hand, E. †giganteus of Texas exceeded the heaviest modern draught-horses in size and was the largest of the American species; of other Texan forms, one (E. †scotti) resembled Burchell’s Zebra (E. burchelli) in the proportions of head and neck, body and limbs, while another (E. †semiplicatus) was more ass-like. The forest horse of the eastern states has been named E. †pectinatus, an animal of moderate size. The Great Plains must have been fairly covered with enormous herds of horses, the countless bones and teeth of which, entombed in the Sheridan formation, have given to it the name of “Equus beds.” The most abundant of the plains species is E. †complicatus, a horse of about 14½ hands in height (i.e. 4 feet 10 inches at the shoulder) which also ranged down the Mississippi Valley nearly or quite to the Gulf of Mexico. In California was E. †occidentalis, equalling E. †complicatus in size, but with much more simple teeth, and associated with it the much larger E. †pacificus, which was inferior only to E. †giganteus and therefore the second largest of the American Pleistocene horses.

To one who knows nothing of the geological history of North America it would be natural to suppose that the Pleistocene horses must have been immigrants from the Old World, which failed to establish themselves permanently here, since they completely disappeared before the discovery of the continent by Europeans. This would, however, be a mistaken inference, for North America was for long ages the chief area of development of the equine family, which may here be traced in almost unbroken continuity from the lower Eocene to the Pliocene. On the other hand, it is quite possible that some of the species were immigrants.

Tapirs, which are now confined to southern Asia, Central and South America, were not uncommon in the forested parts of eastern North America as far north as Pennsylvania, but they have not been found west of the Mississippi in the plains region. Two species are known, a larger and heavier one, Tapirus †haysii, and a smaller one which seems to be identical with the living T. terrestris of Central and South America. Like the horses, the tapirs had a long history of development in North America and may well have originated here, but they withdrew from the continent in the Pleistocene, probably yielding to the last of the glacial advances.

There was likewise a much greater variety of Artiodactyla than North America can boast at the present day; some were autochthonous, but, for the most part, they were migrants from the eastern hemisphere, where the great group of the true ruminants (Pecora) passed through the greater part of its development and where its headquarters still are. Indigenous were the peccaries, or American swine, which still occur from Texas south to Brazil. In Pleistocene time they ranged over nearly all of the United States, as far northward as Pennsylvania, and across the plains to the Pacific coast; they were represented by two genera, now extinct, one of which (†Platygonus) had crested grinding teeth and much longer legs than the modern peccaries. Another indigenous group, strange as that may seem, is the suborder (Tylopoda) of the camels and llamas, both of which are represented in the North American Pleistocene, the descendants of a very long American ancestry. Some of these tylopodans were far larger than existing forms, and at least one species extended its range to Alaska.

Of ultimately Old World origin, but through a considerable line of descent in America, were the typically American deer (Odocoileus) of which the Virginian and Black-tailed species are familiar modern instances. Whether or not the Old World types, the Caribou (Rangifer) and Wapiti (Cervus canadensis) had reached the western hemisphere, is a matter of some doubt; if present at all, they must have been comparatively rare. The Moose (Alce americanus), on the other hand, had already appeared, but seems to have been confined to the western half of the continent, its presence in the east being questionable. The mistakenly named “Rocky Mountain Goat” (Oreamnos montanus), which is an antelope of the chamois group, was an apparently late arrival in the Pleistocene, while the peculiar Prong-Buck (Antilocapra americana), which is very different from any of the Old World antelopes, was present in the early part of the epoch. The descent of this remarkable animal is still a problem, but not improbably it was derived from the “deer-antelopes” of the Miocene and Pliocene, the last of which occurred in the early Pleistocene. Mr. Gidley has announced the surprising discovery in Maryland of a large antelope hardly distinguishable from the African Eland (Taurotragus). Other late arrivals from the Old World were several forms allied to the existing Musk Ox (Ovibos), at least two genera of which (†Preptoceras and †Euceratherium) have been found in California. A surprising number of species of Bison occurred in the Pleistocene, no less than seven of which are recognized as distinct, ranging from Florida to Alaska. It is not likely that all these species coexisted at the same time, but we cannot yet determine their order of succession, though the modern species, B. bison, was probably the latest to arise. Most of these species were much larger than B. bison, and some were gigantic, such as B. †latifrons, which had a spread of horns of 6 feet and is found through the Mississippi Valley, and B. †crassicornis of Alaska.

Preying upon this great assemblage of hoofed animals was a corresponding array of Carnivora, most of which were indigenous and derived from American stocks, but there was a considerable migrant element also, such as the bears and badgers. Nearly all the modern kinds of flesh-eaters found in the North America of to-day were already here in the Pleistocene, minks, weasels, martens, skunks, otters, badgers, wolverenes, raccoons, foxes, wolves, coyotes, pumas, etc., etc., but there were several others which are either now extinct or no longer to be found in this continent. Of the extinct types much the most striking were the several species of †sabre-tooth tigers (†Smilodon, see Frontispiece) which have been found in the greater part of the United States and no doubt ranged over the whole. These were massive, short-tailed and rather short-legged, but very muscular and powerful, cat-like animals, in which the upper canine teeth were converted into great, recurved, scimitar-like tusks. These large beasts of prey, which about equalled the Leopard in height, but were far heavier, belonged to a group which, at one time or another, spread over nearly the whole world and persisted much later and attained a larger size and higher development in the western hemisphere than in the eastern. They had a very long American ancestry, from the lower Oligocene to the end of the Pleistocene, but the place of their origin is still unknown. In addition to the pumas and lynxes, there were some very large true felines (Felis †atrox and F. †imperialis), which closely resembled the Lion (F. leo) in size, appearance and structure, and have been found in California and the Mississippi Valley; probably these great cats were immigrants, but they may represent a native development of Miocene and Pliocene stock; the history of the family is too imperfect for a decision of this question.

Besides coyotes and wolves which are indistinguishable from existing species, there were some very large wolves, now extinct, of which the commonest and most widely distributed was Canis †dirus (also called C. †indianensis) so abundant in the asphalts of southern California. Bears were not so common in the middle Pleistocene and have not been found in the older part of that epoch, though they probably had already reached North America from the Old World, where they originated. Their absence from the older Pleistocene (Equus Beds) may be accounted for by the fact that those beds contain a fauna of the open plains, while bears are chiefly forest-living animals. An extinct type of the family is the group of species which constitute the †short-faced bears (†Arctotherium), very large and powerful creatures, with remarkably shortened jaws, which have been found from ocean to ocean. The smaller beasts of prey, badgers, weasels, etc., were, as intimated above, substantially the same as now.

The rodents of the Pleistocene were very nearly in their modern stage of development, most of the genera and many of the species surviving to present times. Just what members of the order were introduced from the Old World, the imperfect and fragmentary history will not permit us to say, but some interesting South American immigrants should be noted. One of these, the Capybara or so-called Water-Hog (Hydrochærus capybara), the largest of existing rodents, failed to gain a permanent foothold, but another South American form, the Short-tailed or Canada Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatus), common all over the United States in the Pleistocene, has maintained itself to the present day. One especially peculiar form, not derived from South America or the Old World, is the †Giant Beaver (†Castoroides), one species of which, †C. ohioensis, was as large as a Black Bear and occurred in the later Pleistocene, while a smaller species (†C. species indet.) is found in the more ancient deposits of the epoch. In almost all respects †Castoroides was simply a gigantic beaver, but the grinding teeth were remarkably like those of the South American Capybara (Hydrochærus), so much so that it has been mistakenly referred to the same family by some authorities.

By far the strangest elements of the Pleistocene faunas were the two suborders of gigantic edentates, the †Gravigrada, or †ground-sloths, and the †Glyptodontia, which might well be called giant armadillos, if that name were not already in use for a living Brazilian animal. Both suborders are completely extinct, but they long played a very conspicuous rôle in South America, where they originated and whence the North American representatives migrated. The †ground-sloths were great, unwieldy, herbivorous animals covered with long hair, and in one family (†Mylodontidæ) there was a close-set armour of pebble-like ossicles in the skin, not visible externally; they walked upon the outer edges of the feet, somewhat as the Ant-Bear (Myrmecophaga) uses his fore paws, and must have been very slow-moving creatures. Their enormous claws may have served partly as weapons of defence and were doubtless used also to drag down branches of trees and to dig roots and tubers. Apparently, the latest of these curious animals to survive was the very large †Megalonyx, which, it is interesting to note, was first discovered and named by Thomas Jefferson. The animals of this genus were very abundant in the forests east of the Mississippi River and on the Pacific coast, much less common in the plains region, where they would seem to have been confined to the wooded river valleys. The still more gigantic †Megatherium, which had a body as large as that of an elephant and much shorter, though more massive legs, was a southern animal and has not been found above South Carolina. †Mylodon, smaller and lighter than the preceding genera, would seem to have entered the continent earlier and to have become extinct sooner; it ranged across the continent, but was much commoner in the plains region and less so in the forested areas than †Megalonyx, being no doubt better adapted to subsisting upon the vegetation of the plains and less dependent upon trees for food.

The †Glyptodonts were undoubtedly present in the North American Pleistocene, but the remains which have been collected so far are very fragmentary and quite insufficient to give us a definite conception of the number and variety of them. It will be better therefore to defer the description of these most curious creatures until the South American Pleistocene is dealt with, as they were incomparably more varied and characteristic in that continent. In North America they have been found only in Mexico and the southern United States.

The many and great climatic changes which took place in the Pleistocene led to very extensive migrations of mammals from one part of the continent to another, as the conditions of temperature and moisture changed. In Interglacial stages, when the climate was much ameliorated, southern species spread far to the north, as when the †Mastodon ranged into Alaska, and the Manatee, or Sea-Cow, of Florida waters, came up the coast to New Jersey, while the increasing cold of oncoming glaciation caused a reverse movement and drove northern and even Arctic forms far to the south. Thus, the Musk-Ox, the Caribou and the northern †Mammoth came south beyond the Ohio and the Potomac, and the Walrus was found on the South Atlantic coast. It is these migrations which give such a mixed character to the Pleistocene faunas from the climatic point of view, as it is often very difficult to correlate or synchronize the fossiliferous deposits with the Glacial and Interglacial stages, though this has been definitely accomplished in several very important instances.

The latest of the Pleistocene faunas is less completely known than those of the earlier and middle portions of the epoch, for but few localities have yet been discovered with any extensive series of fossils. As worked out by Osborn, this fauna coincided with the last Glacial stage and was a greatly reduced and impoverished assemblage as compared with those of the middle and lower Pleistocene, though it is not safe to argue that all the animals not found in this fauna were already extinct, for the known list is still far too short to be entirely representative. The American †Mastodon (†Mastodon americanus, see p. 196) was still abundant in the forested regions and was apparently able to withstand severe winter temperatures, as certainly was the †Mammoth (Elephas †primigenius, see p. 196), which was so abundant in the coldest part of Siberia and which extended south to the Potomac, presumably at this time. Horses were still present in North America, though apparently in greatly diminished numbers and variety. Tapirs have not been found, though they may have lingered on in the southern regions. The typically North American genus of deer (Odocoileus) was, of course, well represented, and Old World types had a much more southerly distribution than at present. The Caribou (Rangifer caribou) came down into Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Moose (Alce americanus) into Kentucky and Kansas, and the Wapiti (Cervus canadensis) is reported as far south as Florida. A very remarkable animal is the Stag-Moose (†Cervalces scotti), the best preserved skeleton of which is that in the museum of Princeton University. This was found in a shell-marl beneath a peat-bog at Mt. Hermon, N. J., north of the great terminal moraine, and therefore most probably this particular individual dates from a time not earlier than the beginning of the final retreat of the ice.

†Cervalces, as its name implies, was in some respects intermediate between the Stag (Cervus) and the Moose (Alce); in general proportions it most nearly resembled the latter, having a short neck, long body and very long legs; but the skull differed in many respects from that of the Moose, especially in parts which show that the great, inflated snout and prehensile upper lip had no such development in the extinct as in the living form. The antlers were unique among the known members of the deer family, resembling those of the Moose, though much less palmated and with the addition of great trumpet-shaped plates. The feet were large, almost as large as in the Caribou, and the whole structure indicates an animal well fitted to travel through deep snows and flourish in severe winters.

Even more typically northern than the Caribou were the Musk-Oxen, of which two genera occurred in the late Pleistocene. One of these, †Symbos, is extinct and was characterized by its short horns; the other, Ovibos, is the genus to which the existing species, O. moschatus and O. wardi, belong and is now confined to the extreme north of the continent, the Arctic islands and Greenland. The remains of Musk-Oxen have been found mostly along the great terminal moraine which marks the front of the last ice-invasion, but they occurred also as far south as Oklahoma, and in Utah they ranged far to the south of the ice-front. Nothing could be more conclusive evidence of a climate much colder than the modern one than the presence of Caribou and Musk-Oxen in the United States and of the Walrus on the coast of Georgia.

The smaller animals were much as they are now, differing only in range. The †sabre-tooth tigers, the last of a most interesting line, persisted in the south, and an extinct genus of skunks has been discovered in Arkansas, but otherwise the Carnivora were entirely modern in character. Unfortunately, these smaller animals are very incompletely known, much the richest aggregation which has yet been found being that collected by Mr. Brown in the Conard Fissure, Arkansas. From this collection Mr. Brown has described thirty-seven genera and fifty-one species of mammals, of which four genera and twenty-four species are extinct. That is to say, less than one-ninth of the genera and one-half of the species represent extinct forms. Contrast this with the middle Pleistocene assemblage found in the Port Kennedy cavern in eastern Pennsylvania, of sixty-four species with at least forty extinct ones.

The foregoing sketch, brief and imperfect as it necessarily is, makes it sufficiently plain that North America during the Pleistocene was far richer in mammalian life than it was when the continent was first settled by Europeans. When we make the proper allowance for the many forms which undoubtedly remain to be discovered and for those which may have vanished without leaving a trace behind them, the contrast becomes all the more striking. Not only did Pleistocene North America have substantially all the mammals that it now possesses, but it had many more. The lions and †sabre-tooth tigers, the gigantic †short-faced bears, the tapirs and many varieties of horses, large and small, the camels and llamas, many species of bisons, some of enormous proportions, several forms allied to the Musk-Ox, the elephants and †mastodons, the †giant beavers and South American water-hogs, the huge †ground-sloths and †glyptodonts, have all disappeared, leaving a continent, that, by contrast, is “zoölogically impoverished.” The Pleistocene fauna was strangely mixed in character, the free roads of migration bringing together Old World and South American types, and mingling them with indigenous forms in a cosmopolitan assemblage.

Turning to South America, we find in the pampas of Argentina a wonderful museum of Pleistocene mammals, such as occurs nowhere else in the known world, and this is supplemented by the very rich collections gathered from the caverns of Brazil and from deposits of Ecuador and Bolivia, and thus all the important regions of the continent, save the far south, are well represented. These faunas are far stranger than the corresponding ones of North America and differ more radically from those of modern times, since they include a much larger proportion of extinct types, and the extinctions have swept away not only species and genera, but families and orders as well.

The South American Pleistocene assemblage of mammals is very clearly divisible into two elements: (1) the immigrants from the north, which reached the southern continent in successive waves of migration, that have left records of themselves as early as the older Pliocene, perhaps even the upper Miocene, and (2) the indigenous element, which had a very long history of development in South America. To the immigrant class belonged all of the Carnivora, which therefore resembled their North American relatives, but were less varied in character. Of the bears, only the huge, †short-faced kind (†Arctotherium, Fig. 275, p. 549) are known, and it is not likely that true bears existed except in the Andes, as is also the case to-day. Of the cat family, the †sabre-tooth tigers (†Smilodon) were as common in South America as in North, and, while there were no lions, there were large cats nearly allied to the Jaguar and Puma, and smaller ones, like the Ocelot. The dogs were quite numerously represented by species resembling closely the existing South American fox-like wolves and the Bush-Dog (Icticyon) and, strange to say, by one which seems referable to the same genus (Cyon) as the Dhole of India. The weasel family (Mustelidæ) were less numerous and varied than in the northern continent, as they still are; coatis (Nasua) and raccoons (Procyon) were abundant and one species of the latter was much larger than any existing one; extinct species of skunk (Conepatus), tayra (Tayra) and otter (Lutra) were also present, but the badgers, minks, martens and wolverenes were not.

The hoofed animals were represented by a great variety of forms, both immigrant and indigenous, of which the latter belonged to orders now entirely extinct. Horses were common in all parts of the continent, where fossils of this epoch have been obtained, and are referable to two very distinct groups: (1) to the typical genus Equus, of which three species have been described, all somewhat more primitive than the True Horse (E. caballus) and, like most of the Pleistocene species of North America, with a certain resemblance to the zebras and asses; (2) to an extinct group of four genera, the best known of which is †Hippidion. The species of this genus (which has also been reported from North America, though upon hardly sufficient evidence) had most exceptional characters in the skull, and the head was relatively large and clumsy, with narrow and very high facial region. The neck was comparatively short, the limbs heavy and the feet short. These animals can hardly have been very swift runners. A very interesting member of this group is †Hyperhippidium, a small horse found in the Andes, with remarkably short feet, well adapted for a mountain life. The only other perissodactyls were tapirs, which ranged down to the Argentine pampas, much farther south than now.

The Artiodactyla were much more varied; there were peccaries, many species of llamas, which then extended into Brazil, and were not confined, as at present, to the colder portions of the continent. There were also numerous deer, all of the South American type, and two different antelopes have been reported, though that family has no representatives in the southern continent now. Several species of †mastodons have been found in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and elsewhere, but none of the true elephants. Why the †mastodons were able to make their way into South America, while the elephants were not, is one of the puzzling questions of mammalian distribution to which no answer can be given.

All the preceding types of hoofed animals, the horses, tapirs, peccaries, llamas, deer, antelopes and †mastodons were migrants from the north, and four of these, tapirs, peccaries, llamas and deer, were able to gain a permanent footing in South America and are more or less abundant there to-day, while the horses, antelopes and †mastodons failed to do so and died out. In addition to these, there were the indigenous types, which are now extinct and have never been found outside of the Neotropical region. An extremely peculiar creature, †Macrauchenia, was the last surviving member of an order, the †Litopterna, which for ages played a very important rôle in South America. †Macrauchenia was a large animal, somewhat larger and of much heavier build than a camel, to which it had a considerable, though entirely superficial, resemblance. The head was relatively small and must have had quite a long proboscis; the neck was very long, suggesting that the animal browsed upon trees, which is also indicated by the character of the teeth; the legs were long and stout, the feet short and each provided with three toes. Another curious creature was †Typotherium, from which is named the group of the †Typotheria, which some authorities regard as a suborder, while others assign to it a full ordinal rank.

The †Typotheres throughout the Tertiary period were among the most abundant and characteristic of the South American hoofed animals, and the genus †Typotherium was the last of a very long series and was an animal of moderate size, with chisel-shaped incisor teeth so like those of the rodents that the genus was long referred to that order. Finally, we have †Toxodon, type of the order †Toxodontia, a ponderous beast, as large as a rhinoceros, which, there is some reason to think, was largely aquatic in its habits. The first species of this extraordinary creature was found by Charles Darwin, who says of it: “Perhaps one of the strangest animals ever discovered; in size it equalled an elephant or megatherium, but the structure of its teeth, as Mr. Owen states, proves indisputably that it was intimately related to the Gnawers [i.e. Rodentia] ... in many details it is allied to the Pachydermata: judging from the position of its eyes, ears, and nostrils, it was probably aquatic, like the Dugong and Manatee, to which it is also allied.”[4] Modern views concerning the relationships of †Toxodon are very different from those advanced by Darwin, but he gives a vivid picture of its diverse likenesses. Neither †Macrauchenia, †Typotherium nor †Toxodon has been found in the Brazilian caverns, but this is no doubt due to the accidents of preservation, for the latter animal ranged north to Nicaragua.