Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/716

696 Another of the interesting changes in mammals during Tertiary time was in the teeth, which were gradually modified with other parts of the structure. The primitive form of tooth was clearly a cone, and all others are derived from this. All classes of Vertebrates below mammals, namely, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and birds, have conical teeth, if any, or some simple modification of this form. The Edentates and Cetaceans with teeth retain this type, except the zeuglodonts, which approach the dentition of aquatic Carnivores. In the higher mammals, the incisors and canines retain the conical shape, and the premolars have only in part been transformed. The latter gradually change to the more complicated molar pattern, and hence are not reduced molars, but transition forms from the cone to more complex types. Most of the early Tertiary mammals had forty-four teeth, and in the oldest forms the premolars were all unlike the molars, while the crowns were short, covered with enamel, and without cement. Each stage of progress in the differentiation of the animal was, as a rule, marked by a change in the teeth; one of the most common being the transfer, in form at least, of a premolar to the molar series, and a gradual lengthening of the crown. Hence, it is often easy to decide from a fragment of a jaw to what horizon of the Tertiary it belongs. The fossil horses of this period, for example, gained a grinding-tooth for each toe they lost, one in each epoch. In the single-toed existing horses, all the premolars are like the molars, and the process is at an end. Other dental transformations are of equal interest, but this illustration must suffice.

The changes in the limbs and feet of mammals during the same period were quite as marked. The foot of the primitive mammal was, doubtless, plantigrade, and certainly five-toed. Many of the early Tertiary forms show this feature, which is still seen in some existing forms. This generalized foot became modified by a gradual loss of the outer toes, and increase in size of the central ones, the reduction proceeding according to systematic methods, differing in each group. Corresponding changes took place in the limb-bones. One result was a great increase in speed, as the power was applied so as to act only in the plane of motion. The best effect of this specialization is seen to-day in the horse and antelope, each representing a distinct group of Ungulates, with five-toed ancestors.

If the history of American mammals, as I have briefly sketched it, seems, as a whole, incomplete and unsatisfactory, we must remember that the genealogical tree of this class has its trunk and larger limbs concealed beneath the débris of Mesozoic time, while its roots doubtless strike so deeply into the Paleozoic that for the present they are lost. A decade or two hence we shall probably know something of the mammalian fauna of the Cretaceous, and the earlier lineage of our existing mammals can then be traced with more certainty.