Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/64

36 branches of a tree bear to the branchlets and leaves. Only one living genus was then known in Europe, and that is a representative of the marsupial type, which, so far as we know, was universal in Europe in the Secondary period. Marsupial characters, however, are to be met with in the Eocene beasts of prey, which render it very probable that in those times the carnivores were in the act, so to speak, of departing from the type of their marsupial ancestry. On no other hypothesis but that of lineal descent is it possible to account for such characters as their small marsupial brain, their dentition, and numerous details in their skeletons. It would further appear that the lemurs of those times were closely linked to the Ungulata or hoofed quadrupeds.

It is obvious that man had no place in such an assemblage of animals as that described in this chapter. To seek for highly-specialised man in a fauna where no living genus of placental mammal was present would be an idle and hopeless quest. Nevertheless, it is an important fact to note that the lowest member of the order Primates, to which he belongs in natural history classification, was represented in the upper Eocenes of Europe, and throughout the whole of the Eocene period in America.