More Science from an Easy ChairLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
More Science from an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history; Science
Tetrabelodon, (3) Palaeomastodon, (4) Meritherium, until we come to
something approaching the general form of skull and skeleton and the
typical dentition of the early mammalian ancestor. Mastodons of
several species are found in Pliocene strata in Europe and Asia;
detached teeth are found in Suffolk. One species actually survived
(why, we do not know) in North America into the early human period,
and whole skeletons of it are dug out from the morasses such as that
of "Big-bone Lick." The Mastodons had a longer jaw and face than the
elephants, though closely allied to them. They bring one nearer to
ordinary mammals in that fact, and also in having (when young) two
front teeth or incisors in the lower jaw. Their grinders had the
crowns less elongated than those of the elephants, and there were only
five cross-ridges--on the biggest--and these ridges tend to divide
into separate cones (Fig. 8). So here, too, we are approaching the
ordinary mammals, of which we may keep the pig and the tapir in mind
as samples. But the Mastodons still had the great trunk and huge tusks
of the elephants.
Next we must look at Tetrabelodon (Fig. 12), and it is this creature
which has really revealed the history of the strange metamorphosis by
which elephants were produced. The Tetrabelodon is known as "the
long-jawed mastodon," because, as was shown in a wonderfully
well-preserved skeleton from the lower Pliocene of the centre of
France, set up in the Paris Museum, it had a lower jaw of enormous
length, ending in two large horizontally directed teeth (Fig. 12).
Instead of a lower jaw a foot long, as in an elephant or in the common
kind of mastodon--this long-jawed kind had a lower jaw 5 feet or 6
feet long! The tusks of the upper jaw were large, and nearly
horizontal in direction, bent downwards a little on each side of the
long lower jaw. This lower jaw seemed incomprehensible, almost a
monstrosity--until it occurred to me that it exactly corresponds to
the elongated upper lip and nose which we call the elephant's
trunk--and that the trunk of "Tetrabelodon" must have rested on his
long lower jaw. In descending to Tetrabelodon we leave behind us the
elephants with hanging unsupported trunk; the lower jaw here is of
sufficient length to support the great trunk. When the lower jaw
shortened in the later mastodons and elephants the trunk did not
shorten too, but remained free and depending, capable of large
movement and of grasping with its extremity. Photographs, casts, and
actual specimens of the extraordinary skull of the long-jawed mastodon
or Tetrabelodon and of the creatures mentioned below may be seen in
the Natural History Museum.
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