A handbook to the carnivora. Pt. I, Cats, civets, and mongooses / by Richard Lydekker.
- Richard Lydekker
- Date:
- 1896
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A handbook to the carnivora. Pt. I, Cats, civets, and mongooses / by Richard Lydekker. Source: Wellcome Collection.
363/392 page 287
![the last molar being small and oval. In the limbs the femur has a third trochanter; the five-toed hind-feet were probably plantigrade, and present considerable resemblances to those of the primitive Civets and Dogs, while the claws were retractile. The genus is exclusively North American, and is represented by some three species from the Miocene strata of Nebraska, Colorado, and Oregon, its typical member being Dinictis felitia, which appears to have been an animal of the approxi- mate dimensions of a Lynx. Of D. cyclops Professor Cope remarks that “ although of an inferior position in the system of Carnivora, its powers of de- struction must have excelled those of the Catamount [Lynx]. While the skull is generally less robust, its sectorial teeth are not smaller nor less effective than those of that animal, and the canines far excel those of the living species, as instruments for cutting their prey.” VII. GENUS NIMRAVUS. Nimravus, Cope, Proc. Acad. Philad. 1879, p. 169; id., Amer. Naturalist, vol. xiv. p. 842 (1880). Nearly allied to the last, this genus, which is likewise North American, forms an exception to the present group in that there are only two pairs of pre-molar teeth in the lower jaw. In the upper jaw the first pre-molar is minute, and the molar transversely elongated ; while in the lower jaw the carnassial tooth is devoid of an inner cusp, and the second molar very small. The femur has no third trochanter. While the pre- ceding genus is most common in the Lower Miocene White River beds, the present one is confined to the overlying Upper Miocene Tohn Day beds of Oregon, where it is represented by N. gomphodus and Ar. confcrius, both of which may be compared in size to a Leopard. In all the points in which the genus differs from Dinictis, it approximates to the modern Cats : precisely as might have been expected from the higher geological hori- zon in which its remains occur,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28137309_0363.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
