No unequivocal fossil remains of the sheep have yet been found in
the bone-caves, the drift, or the more tranquil stratified newer
Pliocene deposits, so associated with the fossil bones of oxen,
wild-boars, wolves, foxes, otters, &c., as to indicate the coevality
of the sheep with those species, or in such an altered state as to
indicate them to have been of equal antiquity. Professor Owen had his
attention particularly directed to this point in collecting evidence
for a history of British Fossil Mammalia. No fossil core-horns of the
sheep have yet been any where discovered; and so far as this negative
evidence goes, we may infer that the sheep is not geologically more
ancient than man; that it is not a native of Europe, but has been
introduced by the tribes who carried hither the germs of civilisation
in their migrations westward from Asia.