ABSTRACT
The Perissodactyla or odd-toed ungulates comprise the horse, tapir and rhinoceros families. The earliest Perissodactyla appeared in the Eocene. The Tapir family was widely distributed in North America and the Old World in the Tertiary. Tapirs are forest animals and partly aquatic; they live on water vegetation but also browse on forest trees, pulling down branches and twigs with the help of the short trunk. The rhinoceroses form an important element in the Pleistocene fauna of Europe. Almost all the Ice Age rhinos of Europe belong to the group of the present-day Sumatra rhinoceros, the genus Dicerorhinus. The earliest equid, the Eohippus or Hyracotherium of the Eocene epoch, was a small animal with four-toed fore-feet and three-toed hind feet and a very primitive dentition. These animals, which of course did not in the least resemble a modern horse, are linked to the latter by an unbroken evolutionary series spanning almost fifty million years.
