Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives And Evolutionary Hist
Chapter 1 -- Methods Of Study And The Place Of Dogs In Nature defines all members of the order Carnivora as having carnassial teeth, which are the upper fourth premolar and the lower first molar that function together as shears. Chapter 2 -- The Origin Of Canids And Other Doglike Carnivorous Mammals features early forms that have long, thick snouts; Figure 2.9 -- Comparison Of Hyaenodon horridus And Hyainailouros sulzeri (page 17) shows life appearances and the difference in body sizes of two hyaenodontid creodonts. Chapter 3 -- Diversity -- Who Is Who In The Dog Family features the more doglike forms of Aelurodon ferox (Figure 3.17 on page 44), Epicyon haydeni (Figure 3.21 on page 48), and Borophagus diversidens (Figure 3.22 on page 49) as well as the recent Dire Wolf (Figure 3.32 on page 61) and Gray Wolf (Figure 3.36 on page 64). In Chapter 4 -- Anatomy And Function -- How The Parts Work, the skull and jaw of the Gray Wolf (Figure 4.3 on page 72) is contrasted with the skull and jaw of the Leopard (Figure 4.4 on page 76), which has a shortened rostrum (snout) and heightened, sharpened carnassial teeth, and the skull and jaw of the Cave Bear (Figure 4.5 on page 77), which has shortened, broadened carnassial teeth and large, broad molars. The art image in Plate 2 -- Life Reconstruction Of Enhydrocyon is so excellent that it looks like a vibrant photograph of the feeding animal and surrounding ground in fading sunlight. Chapter 5 -- Hunting And Social Activity describes large canids' effective use of social hunting because of the lack of individual capturing ability. In Chapter 8 -- Domestic Dogs, the validity of Stanley Olsen's theory that wolves staying around human settlements for discarded food enabled the first domestications (page 163) was shown by the observations of British hunter George Frederick Ruxton of the 1800s, who wrote about wolves intelligently following hunters and waiting for opportunities to garner food.
