The first-named bone is shorter in the adult, and the proportions of that bone in the young as well as its curvature are suggestive of that ancient {250} Ungulate Phenacodus (see p.
An Ungulate is essentially a running animal, and has no need of a grasping finger.
It is a little difficult to be confident that the Typotheria are rightly referred to the Ungulata, since they contradict two important Ungulate rules.
Their structure proclaims these two divisions to be of ancient descent, and not to be modern twigs of the Ungulate stem.
On the other hand, Orycteropus is as distinctly comparable with a primitive Ungulate type, such as is exemplified by Moschus.
This huge ungulate had cheek-teeth singularly like those of a rhinoceros, and an enormous pair of tusk-like upper incisors, recalling the upper canines of Machaerodus on an enlarged scale.
In this place may be mentioned another strange ungulate from the Santa Cruz beds of Patagonia, namely, Astrapotherium, sometimes regarded as typifying a suborder by itself.
No one will deny that the Hipparion is intermediate between the existing horse and certain otherungulate forms.
In South Africa the competition for browsing on the higher branches of the acacias and other trees must be between giraffe and giraffe, and not with the other ungulate animals.
It thus appears that an Ungulate such as the horse, is an extreme modification of the general Mammalian plan, his members being highly specialized for a certain kind of work.
No example of the great Ruminant group of the Ungulate Quadrupeds has as yet been detected in deposits of Eocene age.
The only other Odd-toed Ungulate which needs notice is the so-called Equus fossilis of the Post-Pliocene of Europe.
In no adult Ungulate except Typotherium is there any trace of a clavicle, but a vestigial clavicle has been described in early embryos of sheep[171].
The skull resembles that of bears, but the grinding teeth are of Ungulate type, while the second incisors resemble those of rodents, and have persistent pulps.
Defn: A group of ungulate mammals including the hog and the hippopotamus.
A group ofungulate mammals including the hog and the hippopotamus.
As I said above, the primitive Ungulate soon branches into three types which dimly foreshadow the tapir, the horse, and the rhinoceros, the three forms of the Perissodactyl.
Nearly all of them have the five-toed foot of the reptile ancestor; and the flat nails on their toes are the common material out of which the hoof of the ungulate and the claw of the carnivore will be presently fashioned.
We then presently find this generalised Ungulate branching into three types, one of which seems to be a patriarchal tapir, the second is regarded as a very remote ancestor of the horse, and the third foreshadows the rhinoceros.
This animal (Moeritherium) only differed from the ordinary primitive Ungulate in these incipient elephantine features.
