Mythical Monsters. Gould Charles

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СКАЧАТЬ tichorhinus– the smooth-skinned rhinoceros – also called the woolly rhinoceros and the Siberian rhinoceros, which had two horns, and, like the mammoth, was covered with woolly hair. It attained a great size; a specimen, the carcase of which was found by Pallas imbedded in frozen soil near Wilui, in Siberia (1772), was eleven and a half feet in length. Its horns are considered by some of the native tribes of northern Asia to have been the talons of gigantic birds; and Ermann and Middendorf suppose that their discovery may have originated the accounts by Herodotus of the gold-bearing griffons and the arimaspi.

      Its food, ascertained by Von Brandt, and others, from portions remaining in the hollows of its teeth, consisted of leaves and needles of trees still existing in Siberia. The range of this species northwards was as extensive as that of the mammoth, but its remains have not yet been discovered south of the Alps and Pyrenees.

      The investigation,49 made by M. E. Lartet in 1860, of the contents of the Grotto of Aurignac, in the department of the Haute Garonne, from which numerous human skeletons had been previously removed in 1852, shows that this animal was included among the species used as ordinary articles of food, or as exceptional items at the funeral feasts of the Palæolithic troglodytes. In the layers of charcoal and ashes immediately outside the entrance to the grotto, and surrounding what is supposed to have been the hearth, the bones of a young Rhinoceros tichorhinus were found, which had been split open for the extraction of the marrow. Numerous other species had been dealt with in the same manner; and all these having received this treatment, and showing marks of the action of fire, had evidently been carried to the cave for banqueting purposes. The remains of Herbivora associated with those of this rhinoceros, consisted of bones of the mammoth, the horse (Equus caballus), stag (Cervus elaphus), elk (Megaceros hibernicus), roebuck (C. capreolus), reindeer (C. tarandus), auroch (Bison europæus). Among carnivora were found remains of Ursus spelæus (cave-bear), Ursus arctos? (brown bear), Meles taxus (badger), Putorius vulgaris (polecat), Hyæna spelæa (cave-hyæna), Felis spelæa (cave-lion), Felis catus ferus (wild cat), Canis lupus (wolf), Canis vulpis (fox). Within the grotto were also found remains of Felis spelæa (cave-lion) and Sus scrofa (pig). The cave-bear, the fox, and indeed most of these, probably also formed articles of diet, but the hyæna seems to have been a post attendant at the feast, and to have rooted out and gnawed off the spongy parts of the thrown-away bones after the departure of the company.

      In the Pleistocene deposits at Würzburg, in Franconia, a human finger-bone occurs with bones of this species, and also of other large mammalia, such as the mammoth, cave-bear, and the like.

      And flint implements, and pointed javelin-heads made of reindeer horn, are found associated with it in the vicinity of the old hearths established by Palæolithic man in the cave called the Trou du Sureau, on the river Malignée in Belgium.

      In the cavern of Goyet, also in Belgium, there are five bone layers, alternating with six beds of alluvial deposits, showing that the cave had been inhabited by different species at various periods. The lion was succeeded by the cave-bear, and this by hyænas; then Palæolithic man became a tenant and has left his bones there, together with flint implements and remains of numerous species, including those already enumerated as his contemporaries.

      The Sabre-toothed Tiger or Lion. – This species, Machairodus50 latifrons of Owen, was remarkable for having long sabre-shaped canines. It belongs to an extinct genus, of which four other species are known, characterised by the possession of serrated teeth. The genus is known to be represented in the Auvergne beds between the Eocene and Miocene, in the Miocene of Greece and India, in the Pliocene of South America and Europe, and in the Pleistocene. Mr. Dawkins believes that this species survived to post-glacial times. It is one of the numerous animals whose remains have been found with traces of man and flint implements in cave deposits at Kent’s Hole, near Torquay, and elsewhere.

      The Cave-Bear, Ursus spelæus, of Rosenmüller. – The appearance of this species has been preserved to us in the drawing by Palæolithic man found in the cave of Massat (Arieze).

      It occurs in the Cromer Forest Bed, a deposit referred by Mr. Boyd Dawkins to the early part of the Glacial period, and generally regarded as transitional between the Pliocene and Quaternary. It is also found in the caves of Perigaud, which are considered to belong to the reindeer era of M. Lartet or the opening part of the Recent period, and numerous discoveries of its remains at dates intermediate to these have been made in Britain and in Europe. Carl Vogt, indeed, is of opinion that this species is the progenitor of our living brown bear, Ursus arctos, and Mr. Boyd Dawkins also says that those “who have compared the French, German, and British specimens, gradually realize the fact that the fossil remains of the bears form a graduated series, in which all the variations that at first sight appear specific vanish away.”

      It has been identified by Mr. Busk among the associated mammalian bones of the Brixham cave. Its remains are very abundant in the bone deposit of the Trou de Sureau in Belgium, and in the cavern of Goyet, which it tenanted alternately with the lion and hyæna, and, like them, appears to have preyed on man and the larger mammalia.

      Mr. Prestwich has obtained it in low-level deposits of river gravels in the valleys of the north of France and south of England, and it has been obtained from the Löss, a loamy, usually unstratified deposit, which is extensively distributed over central Europe, in the valleys of the Rhine, Rhone, Danube, and other great rivers. This deposit is considered by Mr. Prestwich to be equivalent to other high-level gravels of the Pleistocene period.

      The Mastodon. – The generic title Mastodon has been applied to a number of species allied to the elephants, but distinguished from them by a peculiar structure of the molar teeth; these are rectangular, and in their upper surfaces exhibit a number of great conical tuberosities with rounded points disposed in pairs, to the number of four or five, according to the species; whereas in the elephants they are broad and uniform, and regularly marked with furrows of large curvature. The mastodons, in addition to large tusks in the premaxillæ, like those of the elephant, had also in most instances, a pair of shorter ones in the mandible.

      Fig. 11. – Mastodon’s Tooth (worn). (After Figuier.)

      Cuvier established the name Mastodon,51 or teat-like toothed animals, for the gigantic species from America which Buffon had already described under the name of the animal or elephant of the Ohio.

      Fig. 12. – Mastodon’s Tooth. (After Figuier.)

      The form first appears in the Upper Miocene of Europe, five species being known, two of them from Pikermi, near Athens, and one, M. angustidens, from the Miocene beds of Malta. Mastodon remains have also been found in the beds of the Sivalik hills, and four species of mastodon in all are known to have ranged over India during those periods.

      In Pliocene deposits we have abundant remains of M. arvernensis, and M. longirostris from the Val d’Arno in Italy, and the M. Borsoni from central France.

      The M. arvernensis may be considered as a characteristic Pliocene species in Italy, France, and Europe generally. In Britain it occurs in the Norwich Crag and the Red Crag of Suffolk.

      Species of mastodon occur in the Pliocene of La Plata, and of the temperate regions of South America; on the Pampas, and in the Andes of Chili.

      The Mastodon mirificus of Leidy is the earliest known species in America; this occurs in Pliocene deposits on the Niobrara and the Loup fork, west of the Mississippi.

      The remains of СКАЧАТЬ