valley, briefly reflecting the ancient ancestral pattern. Union of the lophs may have been either at the mid-points of the two columns or at the edge of their protomeres. [A protomere is the half of a tooth containing the protocone or protoconid--lingual side of upper tooth and labial side of lower tooth. The paramere is the opposite half of a given tooth--labial side of upper tooth and lingual side in lower tooth. See Miller and Gidley, 1918:434.] Union of the columns at the mid-points would have produced the figure-8 occlusal pattern (or H-pattern), which is characteristic of the early Miocene Geomyinae (_Dikkomys_). Union of the two columns at the protomeres would have produced the U-shaped pattern of the Entoptychinae, which also occurred in the early Miocene and were contemporary with the earliest Geomyinae. Since pre-Miocene geomyids are unknown, the actual phyletic development of the dentition is a matter of speculation. Probably the development of the two divergent lineages, one leading to the Entoptychinae and the other to the subfamily Geomyinae, occurred in the Oligocene (as depicted in Fig. 3). Of the two lineages, the subfamily Geomyinae, in my view, is the more primitive and less specialized. Support for this view is furnished by a reconstruction of the pattern of occlusal wear in _Dikkomys_ and _Pliosaccomys_, especially on the first and second molars. In _Dikkomys_, the anterior and posterior column first unite near their mid-points in the first stages of wear thus producing a figure-8 shaped (H-shaped) occlusal pattern in the premolar and all three molars. Evidently in the first two upper molars, the columns unite closer to their lingual margins than their mid-points, but at any rate both outer and inner re-entrant folds are evident at this stage of wear. With continued attrition on m1 and m2 of _Dikkomys_, the anterior and posterior columns secondarily unite at the edge of their labial margins thus enclosing a fossette of enamel in the labial half of the tooth. The lateral coalescence at the ends of the protomeres occurs because of the shallow vertical depth of the labial re-entrant fold, and the fossette itself does not reach the base of the crown and with continued wear it too would disappear, but not until the last stages of wear, at least in _Dikkomys matthewi_. The lingual re-entrant fold is deep, and therefore, persistent through all stages of wear. Although the amount of wear required for its effacement would be great, the occlusal configuration of the first and second lower molars in _Dikkomys_ could be eventually ground down to a U-pattern as in the entoptychids. Only one upper molar of _Dikkomys_, the first, has been recovered (see Wood, 1936:23, fig. 32B). Although the tooth is in an early stage of wear, the lingual valley is minute. Less attrition than required in m1 and m2 would progressively reduce the lingual fold until it too would essentially form a U-pattern, perhaps retaining a slight lingual inflection.