To which the reply is: "If there is one fact which is impressed on the
conviction of the observer with more force than any other, it is the
persistence and uniformity of the characters of the molar teeth in the
earliest known mammoth and his most modern successor . . . Assuming the
observation to be correct, what strong proof does it not afford of the
persistence and constancy, throughout vast intervals of time, of the
distinctive characters of those organs which arc most concerned in the
existence and habits of the species? If we cast a glance back on the long
vista of physical changes which our planet has undergone since the Neozoic
epoch, we can nowhere detect signs of a revolution more sudden and
pronounced, or more important in its results, than the intercalation and
sudden disappearance of the glacial period. Yet the 'dicyclotherian'
mammoth lived before it, and passed through the ordeal of all the hard
extremities it involved, bearing his organs of locomotion and digestion all
but unchanged. Taking the group of four European fossil species above
enumerated, do they show any signs in the successive deposits of a
transition from the one form into the other? Here again the result of my
observation, in so far as it has extended over the European area, is, that
the specific characters of the molars are constant in each, within a
moderate range of variation, and that we nowhere meet with intermediate
forms." . . .
Dr. Falconer continues (page 80):
"The inferences which I draw from these facts are not opposed to one of the
leading propositions of Darwin's theory. With him, I have no faith in the
opinion that the mammoth and other extinct elephants made their appearance
suddenly, after the type in which their fossil remains are presented to us.
The most rational view seems to be, that they are in some shape the
modified descendants of earlier progenitors. But if the asserted facts be
correct, they seem clearly to indicate that the older elephants of Europe,
such as E. meridionalis and E. antiguus, were not the stocks from which the
later species, E. primigenius and E. Africanus sprung, and that we must
look elsewhere for their origin. The nearest affinity, and that a very
close one, of the European E. meridionalis is with the Miocene E.
planifrons of India; and of E. primigenius, with the existing India
species.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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