Abstract
DR. CLEMENS HARTLAUB's excellent contributions to our knowledge of the recent Sirenians have lately been noticed in these columns (July, 8,p. 214). We have now before us his essay on an extinct form of the same peculiar group of mammals. The luxuriance Of fossil forms of the Oligocene of Belgium is well known to all zoologists. Upon materials gathered from the Superior Rupelian beds of Hoboken, near Antwerp, which have already produced remains of Crassitherium and Halitherium, Dr. Hartlaub founds a new genus of Sirenians, nearly allied to the living Manatee, which he proposes to call Manatherium. Its dentition, so far as it is at present known to us, does not materially differ from that of Manatus, of which, indeed, it may have been the immediate progenitor; and the necessity for its generic separation from its modern representative is perhaps not altogether evident. The species is named Manatherium delheidi, from M. E. Delheid, in whose cabinet of Belgian fossils the remains upon which it is based are contained. Fossil species of true Manatus have been described by Leidy and other authors in America, and M. Filhol has assigned some African remains to the same genus. But Manatherium delheidi is at present the only European form described as belonging to this exact type of the Sirenians.
Ueber Manatherium delheidi, eine Sirene aus dem Oligocän Belgiens.
Von Dr. Clemens Hartlaub. Zool. Jahrb., vol. i. (1886).
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[Book Reviews]. Nature 34, 594 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034594b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034594b0