The descent of man / Wilhelm Boelsche.

  • Bölsche, Wilhelm, 1861-1939.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The descent of man / Wilhelm Boelsche. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    54 THE DESCENT OF MAN sense these creatures have been called Thermorpha, the greater part of their fossil-remains have been found in Cape Co¬ lony, South Africa. Remarkably grotesque fellows belong to them, for instance cumbrous crawling beasts with a single pair of colossal walrus tusks in a mouth that was otherwise without teeth; others again which bore enormous combs with hard bony rays on their backs; and other dragonlike crea¬ tures. But what astonished the experts most at the very beginning was the insistent resemblance of certain traits of the skeleton, particularly of the teeth, to the mammals. A number of scientists promptly inclined to the view that here one had come straight to the searched-for ancestors of the Lizard (Sphenodon punctatus). mammals. From another side this opinion has been contradicted just as vivaciously, but in recent times certain scientists have re-asserted just this view again and again. However cautiously we may express ourselves in this matter, which is by no means decided with certainty, the definite result remains that to that visible fluctuation of the boundary between reptile and amphi- bium another fluctuation appears in the fossil remains of that critical prehistorical hour of the sharp boundary-line between reptile and mammal. I think that we are now justified in drawing the following conclusion. A)t a Certain time, which in this case probably still fell within the end of the primary epoch, there must again have existed one of those collective or primordial heterogeneous groups in which amphibium, reptile and mammal were contained all in one — similar to the probability in which those oldest mam¬ mals of the tertiary epoch were carnivora, ruminant, rodent and marsupial at the same time.