VI. A description of the skull and skeleton of a peculiarly modified rupicaprine antelope (Myotragus balearicus , Bate), with a notice of a new variety, M. balearicus var. major

Abstract

In the spring of 1909, during a short visit to the Balearic Islands in search of fossil vertebrates, Miss D. M. A. Bate discovered in some cavern deposits in Majorca the remains of the remarkable ungulate to which she afterwards gave the name Myotragus balericus . Subsequent visits led to the accumulation of more material and to the discovery that the animal also occurred in Minorca, where its remains were found associated with those of a very large land tortoise which has recently been described!* under the name of Testudo gymnesica . In both Majorca and Minorca the bones were usually found in cave breccias, laid down in caverns which in nearly all cases have been more or less destroyed by the sea, only fragments of the original deposits remaining. An excellent account of these caves and the mode of occurrence of the fossils has recently been published by Miss Bate.