Guide to the great fame animals (Ungulata) in the Department of Zoology, British Museum (Natural History) : Illustrated by 53 text and other figures.

  • British Museum (Natural History). Department of Zoology.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Guide to the great fame animals (Ungulata) in the Department of Zoology, British Museum (Natural History) : Illustrated by 53 text and other figures. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rocky or stony places, where they dwell either in holes beneath the rocks, or in the crevices between them. They feed chiefly on leaves and young twigs ; and are usually only to be seen abroad in the early morning and in the evening. The Syrian species (fig. 49) is the animal called “ Coney ” (= Rabbit) in the English version of the Bible. Examples of several species are exhibited in the case (Nos. 9B3-990). [Central Hall and Fossil Mammal Gallery.] Skull ot the African Elephant (Elephas africanus). In modern Elephants the feet are short, broad and massive, and unlike those of any other existing Ungulates. They have, for instance, five toes, all encased in a common skin, with a flat truncated sole ; externally the only indications of the toes are the broad oval nails, or hoofs, arranged in a semicircle round the front edge of the sole. The teeth comprise a pair of huge tusks, or incisors, in the upper jaw (fig. 50), which grow uninterruptedly throughout life, and large transversely ridged molars (fig. 52), ot which only one or two portions of two on each side of each jaw are in use at the same time; six pairs of these teeth being, however. Suborder PROBOSCIDEA. Since the great majority of the members of this, the last, subordinal group of Ungulates are extinct, it has been deemed advisable to exhibit the mounted specimens, skeletons, tusks, and teeth of its two existing representatives—the Asiatic Elephant (Elephas maximus) and the African Elephant (E. africanus)—in the neighbourhood of or alongside the remains of their fossil cousins and ancestors. Fig. 50.