The Evolution of Man, vol 2 by Ernst Haeckel (fun books to read for adults TXT) 📕

The latter science teaches us that the whole Mammal class divides into three main groups or sub-classes, which correspond to three successive phylogenetic stages. These three stages, which also represent three important stages in our human genealogy, were first distinguished in 1816 by the eminent French zoologist, Blainville, and received the names of Ornithodelphia, Didelphia, and Monodelphia, according to the construction of the female organs (delphys = uterus or womb). Huxley afterwards gave them the names of Prototheria, Metatheria, and Epitheria. But the three sub-classes differ so widely from each other, not only in the construction of the sexual organs, but in many other respects also, that we may confidently draw up the following important phylogenetic thesis: The Monodelphia or Placentals descend from the Didelphia or Marsupials; and the latter, in turn, are descended from the Monotremes or Ornithodelphia.

Thus we must regard as the twenty-first stage in our genealogical tree the earliest and lowest chief group of the Mammals—the sub-class of the Monotremes (“cloaca-animals,” Ornithodelphia, or Prototheria, Figures 2.269 and 2.270). They take their name from the cloaca which they share with all the lower Vertebrates. This cloaca is the common outlet for the passage of the excrements, the urine, and the sexual products. The urinary ducts and sexual canals open into the hindmost part of the gut, while in all the other Mammals they are separated from the rectum and anus. The latter have a special urogenital outlet (porus urogenitalis). The bladder also opens into the cloaca in the Monotremes, and, indeed, apart from the two urinary ducts; in all the other Mammals the latter open directly into the bladder. It was proved by Haacke and Caldwell in 1884 that the Monotremes lay large eggs like the reptiles, while all the other Mammals are viviparous. In 1894 Richard Semon further proved that these large eggs, rich in food-yelk, have a partial segmentation and discoid gastrulation, as I had hypothetically assumed in 1879; here again they resemble their reptilian ancestors. The construction of the mammary gland is also peculiar in the Monotremes. In them the glands have no teats for the young animal to suck, but there is a special part of the breast pierced with holes like a sieve, from which the milk issues, and the young Monotreme must lick it off. Further, the brain of the Monotremes is very little advanced. It is feebler than that of any of the other Mammals. The fore-brain or cerebrum, in particular, is so small that it does not cover the cerebellum. In the skeleton (Figure 2.270) the formation of the scapula among other parts is curious; it is quite different from that of the other Mammals, and rather agrees with that of the reptiles and Amphibia. Like these, the Monotremes have a strongly developed caracoideum. From these and other less prominent characteristics it follows absolutely that the Monotremes occupy the lowest place among the Mammals, and represent a transitional group between the Tocosauria and the rest of the Mammals. All these remarkable reptilian characters must have been possessed by the stem-form of the whole mammal class, the Promammal of the Triassic period, and have been inherited from the Proreptiles.

(FIGURE 2.268. Lower jaw of a Primitive Mammal or Promammal (Dromatherium silvestre) from the North American Triassic. i incisors, c canine, p premolars, m molars. (From Doderlein.))

During the Triassic and Jurassic periods the sub-class of the Monotremes was represented by a number of different stem-mammals. Numerous fossil remains of them have lately been discovered in the Mesozoic strata of Europe, Africa, and America. To-day there are only two surviving specimens of the group, which we place together in the family of the duck-bills, Ornithostoma. They are confined to Australia and the neighbouring island of Van Diemen’s Land (or Tasmania); they become scarcer every year, and will soon, like their blood-relatives, be counted among the extinct animals. One form lives in the rivers, and builds subterraneous dwellings on the banks; this is the Ornithorhyncus paradoxus, with webbed feet, a thick soft fur, and broad flat jaws, which look very much like the bill of a duck (Figures 2.269 and 2.270). The other form, the land duck-bill, or spiny anteater (Echidna hystrix), is very much like the anteaters in its habits and the peculiar construction of its thin snout and very long tongue; it is covered with needles, and can roll itself up like a hedgehog. A cognate form (Parechidna Bruyni) has lately been found in New Guinea.

These modern Ornithostoma are the scattered survivors of the vast Mesozoic group of Monotremes; hence they have the same interest in connection with the stem history of the Mammals as the living stem-reptiles (Hatteria) for that of the reptiles, and the isolated Acrania (Amphioxus) for the phylogeny of the Vertebrate stem.

The Australian duck-bills are distinguished externally by a toothless bird-like beak or snout. This absence of real bony teeth is a late result of adaptation, as in the toothless Placentals (Edentata, armadillos and anteaters). The extinct Monotremes, to which the Promammalia belonged, must have had developed teeth, inherited from the reptiles. Lately small rudiments of real molars have been discovered in the young of the Ornithorhyncus, which has horny plates in the jaws instead of real teeth.

(FIGURE 2.269. The Ornithorhyncus or Duck-mole. (Ornithorhyncus paradoxus).

FIGURE 2.270. Skeleton of the Ornithorhyncus.)

The living Ornithostoma and the stem-forms of the Marsupials (or Didelphia) must be regarded as two widely diverging lines from the Promammals. This second sub-class of the Mammals is very interesting as a perfect intermediate stage between the other two. While the Marsupials retain a great part of the characteristics of the Monotremes, they have also acquired some of the chief features of the Placentals. Some features are also peculiar to the Marsupials, such as the construction of the male and female sexual organs and the form of the lower jaw. The Marsupials are distinguished by a peculiar hook-like bony process that bends from the corner of the lower jaw and points inwards. As most of the Placentals have not this process, we can, with some probability, recognise the Marsupial from this feature alone. Most of the mammal remains that we have from the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits are merely lower jaws, and most of the jaws found in the Jurassic deposits at Stonesfield and Purbeck have the peculiar hook-like process that characterises the lower jaw of the Marsupial. On the strength of this paleontological fact, we may suppose that they belonged to Marsupials. Placentals do not seem to have existed at the middle of the Mesozoic age—not until towards its close (in the Cretaceous period). At all events, we have no fossil remains of indubitable Placentals from that period.

The existing Marsupials, of which the plant-eating kangaroo and the carnivorous opossum (Figure 2.272) are the best known, differ a good deal in structure, shape, and size, and correspond in many respects to the various orders of Placentals. Most of them live in Australia, and a small part of the Australian and East Malayan islands. There is now not a single living Marsupial on the mainland of Europe, Asia, or Africa. It was very different during the Mesozoic and even during the Cenozoic age. The sedimentary deposits of these periods contain a great number and variety of marsupial remains, sometimes of a colossal size, in various parts of the earth, and even in Europe. We may infer from this that the existing Marsupials are the remnant of an extensive earlier group that was distributed all over the earth. It had to give way in the struggle for life to the more powerful Placentals during the Tertiary period. The survivors of the group were able to keep alive in Australia and South America because the one was completely separated from the other parts of the earth during the whole of the Tertiary period, and the other during the greater part of it.

(FIGURE 2.271. Lower jaw of a Promammal (Dryolestes priscus), from the Jurassic of the Felsen strata. (From Marsh.))

From the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the existing Marsupials we may draw very interesting conclusions as to their intermediate position between the earlier Monotremes and the later Placentals. The defective development of the brain (especially the cerebrum), the possession of marsupial bones, and the simple construction of the allantois (without any placenta as yet) were inherited by the Marsupials, with many other features, from the Monotremes, and preserved. On the other hand, they have lost the independent bone (caracoideum) at the shoulder-blade. But we have a more important advance in the disappearance of the cloaca; the rectum and anus are separated by a partition from the urogenital opening (sinus urogenitalis). Moreover, all the Marsupials have teats on the mammary glands, at which the new-born animal sucks. The teats pass into the cavity of a pouch or pocket on the ventral side of the mother, and this is supported by a couple of marsupial bones. The young are born in a very imperfect condition, and carried by the mother for some time longer in her pouch, until they are fully developed (Figure 2.272). In the giant kangaroo, which is as tall as a man, the embryo only develops for a month in the uterus, is then born in a very imperfect state, and finishes its growth in the mother’s pouch (marsupium); it remains in this about nine months, and at first hangs continually on to the teat of the mammary gland.

(FIGURE 2.272. The crab-eating Opossum (Philander cancrivorus). The female has three young in the pouch. (From Brehm.)

From these and other characteristics (especially the peculiar construction of the internal and external sexual organs in male and female) it is clear that we must conceive the whole sub-class of the Marsupials as one stem group, which has been developed from the Promammalia. From one branch of these Marsupials (possibly from more than one) the stem-forms of the higher Mammals, the Placentals, were afterwards evolved. Of the existing forms of the Marsupials, which have undergone various modifications through adaptation to different environments, the family of the opossums (Didelphida or Pedimana) seems to be the oldest and nearest to the common stem-form of the whole class. To this family belong the crab-eating opossum of Brazil (Figure 2.272) and the opossum of Virginia, on the embryology of which Selenka has given us a valuable work (cf. Figures 1.63 to 1.67 and 1.131 to 1.135). These Didelphida climb trees like the apes, grasping the branches with their hand-shaped hind feet. We may conclude from this that the stem-forms of the Primates, which we must regard as the earliest Lemurs, were evolved directly from the opossum. We must not forget, however, that the conversion of the five-toed foot into a prehensile hand is polyphyletic. By the same adaptation to climbing trees the habit of grasping their branches with the feet has in many different cases brought about that opposition of the thumb or great toe to the other toes which makes the hand prehensile. We see this in the climbing lizards (chameleon), the birds, and the tree-dwelling mammals of various orders.

Some zoologists have lately advanced the opposite opinion, that the Marsupials represent a completely independent sub-class of the Mammals, with no direct relation to the Placentals, and developing independently of them from the Monotremes. But this opinion is untenable if we examine carefully the whole organisation of the three sub-classes, and do not lay the chief stress on incidental features and secondary adaptations (such as the formation of the marsupium). It is then clear that the Marsupials—viviparous Mammals without placenta—are a necessary transition from the oviparous Monotremes to the higher Placentals with chorion-villi. In this sense the Marsupial class certainly contains some of man’s