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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    Suborder PERISSODACTYLA. [Lower Mammal Gallery. Cases 37 to 40, and two cases1 in the central line.] In this .group the middle, or third, toe of both fore and hind feet (fig. 2) is larger than any of the others and symmetrical in itself, its centre constituting the middle line or axis of the whole foot. This may be the only toe present, as in Horses (fig. 1), or the second and fourth may be subequally developed on each side of it. In the Tapirs the fifth toe is also present in the fore-foot, but no existing species shows any trace of a first toe. This group at the Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Bones of the Left Fore-foot of a Horse (1) and a Rhinoceros (2). r, radius; u, ulna ; c, carpus ; me, metacarpus; ph, phalanges. present time consists of only three distinct families, the Tapirs, Rhinoceroses, and Horses (including Asses and Zebras); all these being poor in genera and species, and evidently, as shown by the evidence of fossil remains, merely the surviving remnants of a very extensive and varied assemblage of animals which flourished on the earth during almost the whole of the Tertiary geological period. The two domesticated species, the Horse and the Ass, have been largely multiplied and widely dispersed over the surface of the