436 UNGULATA 



penultimate but two. The cranium is much depressed, with com- 

 paratively little development of air-cells. The remainder of the 

 skeleton is imperfectly known, but apparently agrees in its general 

 characters with that of the other Proboscideans. 



Remains of Dinofheriwm giganteum, an animal of elephantine 

 proportions, strikingly characterised by the pair of huge tusks 

 descending nearly vertically from the front of the lower jaw, were 

 first discovered at Eppelsheim, near Darmstadt, and described by 

 Kaup. They have since been met with in various Lower Pliocene 

 and higher Miocene formations in the south of Germany, France, 

 Greece, and Asia Minor. Closely allied forms also occur in the 

 Lower Pliocene and Upper Miocene of India, but none are known 

 from America. 



Suborder Amblypoda. 



Uintatherium. 1 — Among the most remarkable of the compara- 

 tively recent discoveries in the higher Eocene formations of the 

 western states of North America has been one of a group of 

 animals of huge size, approaching that of the largest existing 

 Elephants, presenting a combination of characters quite unlike 

 those known among other recent or extinct creatures, and of which 

 there were evidently many species living contemporaneously, but 

 all of which became extinct before the close of the Eocene period. 

 To form some idea of their appearance, we must imagine animals 

 very elephantine in general proportions and in the structure of their 

 limbs. The feet had five short toes. The tail, as in the Elephants, 

 was long and slender, but the neck, though still short, was not so 

 much abbreviated as in the Proboscideans, and there is no evidence 

 that these animals possessed a trunk. The head differed greatly 

 from that of the Elephants, being long and narrow, more like that 

 of a Rhinoceros, and, as in that animal, was elevated behind into a 

 great occipital crest, and it had developed upon its upper surface 

 three pairs of conspicuous, laterally diverging protuberances — one 

 pair in the parietal region, one on the maxillaries in front of the 

 orbits, and one (much smaller) near the fore part of the elongated 

 nasal bones. Whether these were merely covered by bosses of 

 callous skin, as the rounded form and ruggedness of their extremities 

 would indicate, or whether they formed the bases of attachment for 

 horns of still greater extent, like those of the Rhinoceros or of the 

 Cavicorn Ruminants, can only be a matter of conjecture. There 

 were no upper incisors, but usually three on each side below, of 

 comparatively small size, as was also the lower canine. A huge, 

 compressed, curved, sharp-pointed canine tusk, very similar in form 



1 Leidy, Proc. Ac. Nat. Sci. Philad. 1872, p. 169. 





