While the horses and tapirs and rhinoceroses were being gradually
evolved from the primitive types, the Artiodactyl branch of the
Ungulates--the pigs, deer, oxen, etc.--were also developing. We must
dismiss them briefly. We saw that the primitive herbivores divided early
in the Eocene into the "odd-toed" and "even-toed" varieties; the name
refers, it will be remembered, not to the number of toes, but to the
axis of stress. The Artiodactyl group must have quickly branched in
turn, as we find very primitive hogs and camels before the end of the
Eocene. The first hog-like creature (Homacodon) was much smaller than
the hog of to-day, and had strong canine teeth, but in the Oligocene
the family gave rise to a large and numerous race, the Elotheres. These
"giant-pigs," as they have been called, with two toes on each foot,
flourished vigorously for a time in Europe and America, but were
extinguished in the Miocene, when the true pigs made their appearance.
Another doomed race of the time is represented by the Hyopotamus,
an animal between the pig and the hippopotamus; and the Oreodontids,
between the hog and the deer, were another unsuccessful branch of the
early race. The hippopotamus itself was widespread in Europe, and
a familiar form in the rivers of Britain, in the latter part of the
Tertiary.
The camel seems to be traceable to a group of primitive North American
Ungulates (Paebrotherium, etc.) in the later Eocene period. The
Paebrotherium, a small animal about two feet long, is followed by
Pliauchenia, which points toward the llamas and vicunas, and Procamelus,
which clearly foreshadows the true camel. In the Pliocene the one branch
went southward, to develop into the llamas and vicunas, and the other
branch crossed to Asia, to develop into the camels. Since that time they
have had no descendants in North America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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