Oregon Geology; A Revision of the Two Islands, by Thomas Condon, with a Few Tributes to the Life and Work of the Author

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 Excerpt: ...is, too, a change in the lengthened tips as if these were still farther extended by cartilagineous endings, a provision that might well remind one of the upper lip of the tapir. The ruminant molars of the Oreodon would indicate that it often fed on grass and reeds, but the great spread of the canine teeth of some species would make it very difficult to use its incisors in nipping the grass. Just here an extended upper lip might be used to draw the grass inside the line of its canine teeth. Another handsome Oreodon head in the collection of the writer has some new features. The canine teeth, though well developed, are drawn within the really graceful outline of the cheek, giving full play to the incisors. On Plate XII. is figured the lower portion of the head of an Oreodon no larger than that of a fox, marking, perhaps, the extreme range of the family. In looking over the cases that contain the fossils of these lower lake beds with the thought of the comparative numbers of these large mammals in mind, the figures were found to be: rhinoceros five, horses seven, dogs four, cats three, peccaries and hogs five, Oreodons twenty; and these numbers fairly represent their relative frequency in the fossil beds. It will be seen, then, that in the frequency of their occurrence as fossils, one sees the importance of their place in the life record of the Miocene. Paleontologists ascribe to their skeletons some features of the deer, others of the camel, and with great unanimity set him down as a ruminating hog, and his anatomy as that of a comprehensive type. One can scarcely study such a form as he loosens fragment after fragment from a crumbling hillside, without a conviction that the law of lineal descent, with the holding power of heredity, and the directing power of...