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CHAPTER XVII.

Ordo CARNIVORA.

CANIDIE.

The Canida are abundantly represented among the bones from Anau; nevertheless their determination is not always easy. The animal of which we find the best-preserved bones, both complete skulls and bones of the trunk and of the extremities, is the fox.

Canis vulpes Linnxus, Vulpes montana (?) Pearson. (See plate 71, figs. 3-13.)

We find in the Anau kurgan two skulls in a very perfect state of preservation and i 2 bones of the extremities as well as cervical vertebra. Thus we can make an exact determination of this animal.

As the measurements of the following list will show, the foxes of Anau were not as large as those of Germany, but are closely similar to a recent fox from

Tor on the Red Sea, whose skull is preserved in the Museum at Bern. The neolithic fox skull of the Swiss pile-dwellings of Schaffis is also smaller and nearly agrees with another skull from Sinai. The size of these fox skulls must not be taken as indicating a difference in species, however, for it is quite possibly attributable to a difference of age and sex.

Pearson,* in describing his Vulpes montana, which probably occurs also in

Turkestan, was not able to show any osteological difference between it and the common fox; the only difference being in the skin. Thus we may assume, though

without possibility of confirmation, that we have here also the mountain fox

(Vulpes montana Pearson), which is surely only a variety of the common fox. The bones here shown are certainly not those of an interloper of modern times,

as one might suppose from the perfect state of their preservation. They are, to judge from the structure of the bone material, as old as the other bones of the

Table of dimensions (in millimeters.)

*On the Canis vulpes montana, Bengal, Journal Asiat. Soc., iv, 1835, P. 324.

—6 feet,

No. 392.

+26 feet, No. 871.

Tibia,
—6 feet,
No. 389.

Radius,
+23 feet,
No. 56 b.

Femora.

Extremity bones,'.

Length   

Width of proximal end   

Diameter of proximal end   

Width of median part   

Diameter of median part   

Width of distal end   

Diameter of distal end   

126 24 8 7 6 18 2I

I23

19 2I

5

6

12

8

II2

2I

7

6

5

17

18

I13

14

20

6

7

18

13

f

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