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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

CAVICORNIA.   363

incisive part. These qualities are easily recognizable in the table of dimensions above. It is clear enough that the present lower jaw belongs, not to a buffalo, but to a large taurine animal like the European urus.

The well-preserved basioccipital bone shows equally well a marked difference between buffalo and taurus (see plate 74, figs. 2-3). In the buffalo it approaches more the type of Ovis, is rather short, and the tubercula pharyngeæ predominate vis-à-vis the upper protuberances. In regard to size, the basioccipital of Anau corresponds very exactly with that of the skulls of Bos primigenius of the British Museum.

Lastly, the fragment of a horn-core (plate 78, fig. 2) denotes a round-horned animal and not a bovid with flat horns of quadrangular or triangular cross-section. This fragment represents the basal part of a left horn-core with some frontal pieces attached. Its surface is granulous, therefore it seems to have belonged to an adult individual. The core is at the base filled with some spongy bone substance, which gives the impression that it must have belonged to a gigantic individual with enormous horns, like those found by Abbé David in the Chinese loess near Suen-hua-fu. This is corroborated by the measurements compared with those of several other horn-cores of Bos namadicus and Bos primigenius, which are remarkable for their size.

It is, therefore, proved beyond doubt that a large taurine animal furnished the bones in question, and in the light of our researches concerning the wild bovine animals of these regions, it must certainly have been the Bos namadicus Falconer & Cautley, i. e., the Asiatic urus.

Of the bovine group, there remain to be considered only the Taurina proper and the Protaurina, as well as the bison and yak. Here, too, the teeth offer an easy means of discrimination. According to Rütimeyer* (I) : " Bison and yak have become so sharply characterized that their teeth can be distinguished from those of Taurus, Bubalus, and of the Bibovina (Protaurus mihi) through the weakest development of the accessory columns."

This difference is more clearly shown on plate 74. It will be seen from fig. 4 that in this specimen of Pcephagus grunniens from Nepal, male, about 6 years of age, the construction of the teeth is very simple. It is No. 6i 1 a; 5 ab 28, No. 152, British Museum.

On the other hand, fig. 5, Bos namadicus (specimen 36672), called by Rütimeyer Bos palceogaurus (Paleontological Gallery, British Museum) ; fig. 6, Bos primi-genius Bojanus, Pleistocene, Grays (Essex) (No. 21296, 21647, Paleont. Gal., British Museum) ; fig. 7, a molar series from Anau; fig. 8, Bos taurus macroceros, long-horned cattle brought from Nepal by Hodgson, 1848 (?) (British Museum) (skull, plate 82, fig. 1) ; fig. 9, Bos frontalis Evans, from Assam (British Museum) ; fig. Io, Bubalus occipitalis Falconer (Probubalus triquetricornis Rütimeyer, No. 16173, Paleont. Gal., British Museum) show more and different plications of the enamel-folds.

* Versuch einer Natürlichen Geschichte des Rindes, i Abteilung, p. 91.