Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/118

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The disappearance of the apes from Europe at the close of the Pleiocene age is one of the most important facts to be recorded in the history of the mammalia. In the upper Meiocene the apes ranged as far north as Eppelsheim, in the lower Pleiocene they were restricted to the forests of the south of France, and in the upper Pleiocene to those of Italy. Their gradual southern retreat and final extermination in Europe are probably due to a change in climate,—to a lowering of the temperature, which arrived at its maximum in the Pleiocene age.

In dealing with the question of the presence of man in Europe, we have seen that he could not reasonably have been expected to have been a member of faunas in which the mammalia were represented solely by extinct species. In the Pleiocene age there is no inherent improbability of man having been present, seeing that at least one living animal shows that living forms had a footing among those which have become extinct. The family of lemurs made its appearance both in Europe and in America in the Eocene; the apes, or Simiadæ, in the Meiocene. Did the next family in the classification of the naturalists, or that of man, appear in Europe in the Pleiocene? An affirmative answer to this question is considered, by several eminent observers, to be given by the discovery of human remains in Italy.

The first to be noticed is a human skull, discovered