ANIMAL LIFE OF THE TERTIARY. Little needs to be said of the
Tertiary invertebrates, so nearly were they like the invertebrates
of the present. Even in the Eocene, about five per cent of marine
shells were of species still living, and in the Pliocene the
proportion had risen to more than one half.
Fishes were of modern types. Teleosts were now abundant. The ocean
teemed with sharks, some of them being voracious monsters seventy-
five feet and even more in length, with a gape of jaw of six feet,
as estimated by the size of their enormous sharp-edged teeth.
Snakes are found for the first time in the early Tertiary. These
limbless reptiles, evolved by degeneration from lizardlike
ancestors, appeared in nonpoisonous types scarcely to be
distinguished from those of the present day.
MAMMALS OF THE EARLY TERTIARY. The fossils of continental deposits
of the earliest Eocene show that a marked advance had now been
made in the evolution of the Mammalia. The higher mammals had
appeared, and henceforth the lower mammals--the monotremes and
the marsupials--are reduced to a subordinate place.
These first true mammals were archaic and generalized in
structure. Their feet were of the primitive type, with five toes
of about equal length. They were also PLANTIGRADES,--that is, they
touched the ground with the sole of the entire foot from toe to
heel. No foot had yet become adapted to swift running by a
decrease in the number of digits and by lifting the heel and sole
so that only the toes touch the ground,--a tread called
DIGITIGRADE. Nor was there yet any foot like that of the cats,
with sharp retractile claws adapted to seizing and tearing the
prey. The forearm and the lower leg each had still two separate
bones (ulna and radius, fibula and tibia), neither pair having
been replaced with a single strong bone, as in the leg of the
horse. The teeth also were primitive in type and of full number.
The complex heavy grinders of the horse and elephant, the sharp
cutting teeth of the carnivores, and the cropping teeth of the
grass eaters were all still to come.
Phenacodus is a characteristic genus of the early Eocene, whose
species varied in size from that of a bulldog to that of an animal
a little larger than a sheep. Its feet were primitive, and their
five toes bore nails intermediate in form between a claw and a
hoof. The archaic type of teeth indicates that the animal was
omnivorous in diet. A cast of the brain cavity shows that, like
its associates of the time, its brain was extremely small and
nearly smooth, having little more than traces of convolutions.
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