As the trunks of oaks
are common in the lignite beds in which it lay, it has received the generic name
of Dryopithecus. The angle formed by the ascending ramus of the jaw and the
alveolar border is less open, and therefore more like the human subject, than in
the Chimpanzee, and what is still more remarkable, the fossil, a young but adult
individual, had all its milk teeth replaced by the second set, while its last
true molar (or wisdom-tooth) was still undeveloped, or only existed as a germ in
the jaw-bone. In the mode, therefore, of the succession of its teeth (which, as
in all the old-World apes, exactly agree in number with those in man) it
differed from the Gorilla and Chimpanzee, and corresponded with the human
species.
UPPER MIOCENE BEDS OF OENINGEN, IN SWITZERLAND.
The faluns of the Loire first served, as already stated, as the type of the
Miocene formations in Europe. They yielded a plentiful harvest of marine fossil
shells and corals, but were entirely barren of plants and insects. In
Switzerland, on the other hand, deposits of the same age have been discovered,
remarkable for their botanical and entomological treasures.
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