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II.—The Evolution of the American Tapir

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Charles Earle
Affiliation:
American Museum of Natural History, New York.

Extract

The genus Tapirus of all the recent Ungulata, is the most discontinuous in its distribution over the Earth's surface. Wallace, in his great work on the “Geographical distribution of Animals,” in referring to extinct Tapirs, remarks: “the singular distribution of the living species is thus explained, since we sea that they are an old world group, which only entered the American continent at a comparatively recent epoch.” He reaches this conclusion by the fact that at the time his work was written (1876) the only known remains of the Tapiridse in America were from the Post-Pliocene deposits.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1893

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References

page 392 note 1 Marsh, O. C., Introduction and succession of Vertebrate Life in America, delivered before the American Association at Nashville, 1877.Google Scholar

page 392 note 2 Scott, W. B., On Desmatotherium and Dilophodon, two new Eocene Lophiodonts, Bull. Princeton College, 1883, p. 46.Google Scholar

page 392 note 3 Cope, E. D., The Perissodactyla, American Naturalist, 1888, p. 990.Google Scholar

page 392 note 4 Scott, W. B. and Osborn, H. F., The Mammalia of the Uinta Formation, Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc. 1889, p. 523.Google Scholar

page 392 note 5 Osborn, H. F. and Wortman, J. L., Fossil Mammals of the Wasatch and Wind River Beds, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 1892, p. 124.Google Scholar

page 392 note 6 Filhol, H., Reserches sur les Phosphorites du Quercy, 1877, p. 351.Google Scholar

page 392 note 7 Ibid., Observations sur le memoire de M. Cope, etc., Ann. Sci. Geol. vol. xvii. art. 2.Google Scholar

page 393 note 1 Wortman, J. L. and Earle, Charles, Ancestors of the Tapir from the Lower Miocene of Dakota, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. July, 1893.Google Scholar

page 394 note 1 Earle, Charles, Some points in the Comparative Osteology of the Tapir, Science, March, 1893.Google Scholar