Dogs [antikvár]

The BeginningMillions of years ago, before Man began life on this planet Earth, there lived a small carnivorous mammal known as miacis. Miacis had a body about twenty inches in length, with a tail as long as its body, but its legs were rather short, and it lived mainly in the trees. It was a carnivore, that is, it had teeth specially adapted for tearing and eating flesh, and claws on the ends of its toes for seizing and holding its prey.Miacis was the ancient ancestor of the dogs and bears. It lived in the Oligocene period, some forty million years ago. At this time, mammals were fairly new to the Earth and were small.As the years went by, Miacis developed into two larger types of animal daphneaus and cynodictus. Daphneaus developed into even larger animals until some became extinct, while others developed into the first bears.But Cynodictus, shown in the foreground of the picture opposite, stayed a slender, long-bodied, short-legged animal, until the next period, the Miocene. In the Miocene period, there developed from Cynodictus three groups of dog-like animals. These were the first true dogs, the first members of the family canidae.One group became the ancestors of the hunting dogs of India and Africa, and the bush-dogs of South America. Another became the ancestors of the jackals and hyenas, and the third group developed into the foxes, wolves and dogs we know to-day.In the foreground, Cynodictus 4the ancestor of the modern dog7214 0113 9