| OCR Text |
Show 318 DR. C. J. FORSYTH MAJOR ON FOSSIL GIRAFFIDJE. [May 5, The principal difference from the skull of the living Giraffe, besides the absence of horns in a certain number of perfectly adult and even partially aged specimens, consists in the position occupied by the horns present in some other crania, these being placed, as already stated, on the very roof of the orbits, whilst in the living animal we see them, as is well known, far more backwards, viz. partly on the parietal and partly on the frontal bones. First, as to the hornless skulls. Take away the protuberances and Samotherium boissieri. Side view of skull and mandible of male, one-sixth nat. size. Isle of Samos. horns in a young skull of the Giraffe, and its affinity with the hornless skulls of Samotherium cannot be denied. In these last, as well as in the horned specimens, the superior profile stretches nearly horizontally from the upper part of the occiput towards the snout. The roof of the orbits being made somewhat tumid by pneumatic cavities, even in the hornless specimens, the region between them, occupied in the Giraffe by the so-called unpaired horn, appears hollowed. Another analogy of the superior profile, as well as of the upper contour of the skull of Samotherium, is with the skull of the female Elk, which last genus has been brought by Rutimeyer into close relation with the Giraffe1. 1 L. Rutimeyer, ' Beitrage zu eincr naturliehen Geschichte der Hirsche,' pp. 58-72. |
