Among the fresh-water strata of this age near the base of the Pyrenees are
marls, limestones and sands, in which the eminent comparative anatomist, M.
Lartet, has obtained a great number of fossil mammalia common to the faluns of
the Loire and the Upper Miocene beds of Switzerland, such as Dinotherium
giganteum and Mastodon angustidens; also the bones of quadrumana, or of the ape
and monkey tribe, which were discovered in 1837, the first of that order of
quadrupeds detected in Europe. They were found near Auch, in the Department of
Gers, in latitude 43 degrees 39' N. About forty miles west of Toulouse. They
were referred by MM. Lartet and Blainville to a genus closely allied to the
Gibbon, to which they gave the name of Pliopithecus. Subsequently, in 1856, M.
Lartet described another species of the same family of long-armed apes
(Hylobates), which he obtained from strata of the same age at Saint-Gaudens, in
the Haute Garonne. The fossil remains of this animal consisted of a portion of a
lower jaw with teeth and the shaft of a humerus. It is supposed to have been a
tree-climbing frugivorous ape, equalling man in stature.
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