Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/89

] by two forms which survived from the middle Meiocenes, lived in France and Germany; the Macrotherium, or gigantic ant-eater; and the Ancylotherium, allied to the rhinoceros and mastodon as well as to the Pangolins of Asia and Africa. Like the living Pangolin, the latter probably fed upon insects, and more especially ants and termites, which Professor Heer has shown to have abounded in Meiocene Switzerland.

Three kinds of birds inhabited the Mediterranean district in the neighbourhood of Attica, a pheasant (Phasianus Archaici) larger than the common species, a small fowl (Gallus æsculapii), and a wader (Grus Pentelici).

Great geographical changes took place in the Meiocene age on the continent of Europe. In the lower Meiocene large tracts of land were submerged in France, Belgium, and Italy. Then followed a period of elevation above the sea-level, during which there were great lakes in Auvergne and Switzerland, in which the lower freshwater "molasse" were deposited. Then followed a second period of depression below the sea-level, which reduced the continent to the condition of an archipelago. The waters of the Mediterranean flowed northwards past Berne to join the sea, then covering the basin of the Danube. This mid Meiocene sea afterwards gradually became shallower, and the freshwater lakes of the lower Meiocene are again repeated in Switzerland and in France in the upper Meiocene age.

Auvergne was one of the centres of volcanic activity, and the Meiocene lakes were frequently invaded by