Dr. C. Forsyth Major's Discoveries in the Isle of Samos

Abstract

WE are glad to learn that Dr. H. Woodward, who has just returned from Florence, has secured for the Palæontological Department of the British Museum (Natural History) the valuable collection of Vertebrate remains of Lower Pliocene age obtained by Dr. C. Forsyth Major during the year 1887 in the island of Samos, in the Turkish Archipelago. Dr. Forsyth Major lately contributed to the Comptes rendus (vol. cvii. pp. 1178–81) a preliminary notice of this collection. Among the remains are a large number of forms specifically identical with the mammals from the equivalent deposits of Pikermi in Attica, Baltavar in Hungary, and Maragha in Persia; but there are also some new types, which are of interest either from a distributional or a purely zoological point of view. Among these new forms is a species of ant-bear (Orycteropus), which is the only representative of that genus yet known beyond the Ethiopian region. A large pangolin, which is estimated to have been nearly three times the size of the West African Manis gigantea, is made the type of the new genus Palæomanis; and is of interest as showing how the African pangolins may have been connected with those of India. Perhaps the most striking new type is a large ruminant, referred by the author to the Giraffidæ, and stated to connect Helladotherium and the giraffe with some of the aberrant antelopes of Pikermi. Finally, a large ostrich is especially noteworthy from a distributional point of view, since we now have remains of this genus from Samos, the Thracian Chersonese, and Northern India.