Abstract
A VERY remarkable announcement is made by Mr. J. W. Gidley in vol. lx., No. 27, of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, namely that an associated series of five upper cheek-teeth of a large ruminant from a Pleistocene cave-deposit near Cumberland, Maryland, U.S.A., indicate an antelope apparently closely related to the elands of Africa. So near, indeed, is the resemblance that the author deems himself justified in referring the fossil to the existing genus, under the name of Taurotragus americanus; and the plate showing these teeth alongside those of the existing T. oryx goes a long way in confirming his conclusion. It should have been mentioned that the present writer (see Cat. Siwalik Vert. Ind. Mus., part i., p. 1885) has provisionally referred certain teeth from the Indian Siwaliks to Taurotragus (= Oreas); and if the identification be correct, it would explain how eland might have reached America from Asia by the Bering Sea route. Mr. Gidley quotes the occurrence in the Pleistocene of Nevada of remains of certain ruminants described as Ilingoceros and Spheno-phalus as corroborative evidence of the former exist-tence of tragelaphine antelopes in America; but he omits to mention that although these genera were at first assigned to that group, they have been subsequently regarded as akin to the American family Antilocapridse (Merriam, Bull. Dept. Geol. Univ. California, vol. vi., p. 292). If this be correct, is it quite impossible that the supposed eland represents another member of the same group?
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
L., R. Recent Papers on Vertebrate Palæontology . Nature 91, 595 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/091595a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/091595a0