The Cambridge natural history, Vol. 10 (of 10)Beddard, Frank E. (Frank Evers)
Science
The Cambridge natural history, Vol. 10 (of 10)
Beddard, Frank E. (Frank Evers)
Animals; Mammals
The Quagga was more striped than is sometimes represented in illustrations.
According to Dr. Noack, from whose paper[160] upon the animal I quote here,
the transverse stripes reached back as far as the buttocks; they were,
however, completely absent from the legs. The animal is, as every one
knows, probably completely extinct. In the year 1836 it was still abundant;
in 1864 the last specimen ever exhibited was received by the Zoological
Society. Mr. W. L. Sclater thinks that it may have survived in the Orange
River Colony as late as 1878, but admits that any certainty is difficult,
as it was frequently confounded by the Boers with Burchell's Zebra. Its
rarity is emphasised by the fact that it is not mentioned in the recent
work of that most skilful of hunters, Mr. F. Selous. Gaudry places the
Quagga nearest of all living Equidae to the _Hipparion gracile_ of Pikermi.
FOSSIL EQUIDAE.--The existing Equidae all belong to the genus _Equus_,
though there are some who would (quite unnecessarily) divide off the Zebras
as a genus _Hippotigris_. The genus _Equus_ itself goes back in time to the
Pliocene, during which epoch there lived in India _E. sivalensis_, the same
species according to some with the _E. stenonis_ of Europe. None of these
species, Old World or New, are easily to be separated from _E. caballus_.
But many names have been given to them. It is of course perfectly
conceivable that they may have differed among themselves as much as do the
existing Zebras and Asses, the separation of which would be hardly possible
did we know their bones only. There are, however, extinct genera,
undoubtedly related so closely to _Equus_ as to be placed in the same
family, though clearly separable as genera. _Hipparion_ is one of these
genera; its remains are known from Europe, Asia, and North Africa, from
beds of Miocene and Pliocene times. A large number of different species
have been described. It was a beast of about the size of a Zebra. The
principal characters are that each foot has three toes, of which, however,
the two side ones are smaller than the central toe. There is a marked round
fossa on the maxillary bone, a feature shared by the South American
_Onohippidium_.[161] The pattern of {247} the molar teeth is, too, a little
different from that of _Equus_. _Protohippus_ of the North American
Pliocene is also three-toed, but the two additionally-developed toes are
smaller than in _Hipparion_. Other forms are dealt with below in connexion
with the ancestry of Perissodactyles. It is a curious fact about
_Hipparion_, which is not now regarded as on the direct line of equine
descent, that the edges of the enamel plates of the molars may show a
complicated folding very like that presented by that clearly terminal form
of Perissodactyle life, the gigantic _Elasmotherium_. This is indicative of
high specialisation, which ended in extinction.
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