. Popular science monthly. round. The tongue and groove disappear from the ankle-joint, which becomes flat. The bones of the two rows of the carpusand tarsus no longer alternate with each other, but rest, each one ofthe first on each one of the second row only. In 1874 I foretold thatthe ancestor of all the mammals above mentioned would prove to be a pentadactyle, plantigrade bunodont; that is, a five-toed sole-walker,with tubercular molar teeth. In 1881, seven years later, I obtainedevidence that such a type of mammals abounded in North Americaduring the early Eocene Tertiary period, and the
. Popular science monthly. round. The tongue and groove disappear from the ankle-joint, which becomes flat. The bones of the two rows of the carpusand tarsus no longer alternate with each other, but rest, each one ofthe first on each one of the second row only. In 1874 I foretold thatthe ancestor of all the mammals above mentioned would prove to be a pentadactyle, plantigrade bunodont; that is, a five-toed sole-walker,with tubercular molar teeth. In 1881, seven years later, I obtainedevidence that such a type of mammals abounded in North Americaduring the early Eocene Tertiary period, and the prophecy was ful-filled. The best-known genus of this division has been called Phena-codus, and the figures of it will be found in the American Natural-ist for 1884, In a still earlier formation of the Eocene, nearly all thehoofed mammalia were found to be of this type, showing conclusivelythat this group, which is known as the Condylarthra, was the ancestorof all hoofed mammals (Fig. 1). 6o8 TSI^ POPULAR SCIEl^CE ORIGIN OF MAN AND THE OTHER VERTEBRATES. 609 But the Condylarthra were also ancestors of a still more importantline of mammals. A remarkable type of quadrupeds known as lemursat present inhabits Madagascar and some parts of Africa and Ma-laysia. These creatures, known by the Germans as HaTbaffen, or half-apes, present a curious combination of the characters of monkeys andcarnivora of the raccoon pattern. They could easily have stood in theposition of parents to the monkeys in general; and suspicions to thiseffect have been abundantly confirmed by the discovery of numerousrepresentatives of the sub-order Lemuroidea in the Eocene beds ofboth Europe and North America. And these again have been tracedas certainly to the Condylarthra as ancestors, so that this group isagain proved to be the ancestor of man as well as of the hoofed here was fulfilled another prophecy made by the writer, alongwith the one already mentioned, viz., that the ancestor of ma
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