DESCRIPTIONS OF TWO EXTINCT MAMMALS OF THE 

 ORDER XENARTHRA FROM THE PLEISTOCENE OF 

 TEXAS. 



By Oli\t3r p. Hat, 



Research Associate of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 



Few of the many remarkable animals of the Pleistocene epoch in 

 North America are more interesting than are those which have been 

 known as Edentata, but which now are more properly called 

 Xenarthra. Our interest in them is due in part to their usually 

 large size and their strange forms and habits; in part to the fact that 

 their presence furnishes evidence that about the beginning of the 

 Pleistocene or earlier, there was a sufficiently free communication* 

 between the two American continents, that many South American 

 genera of animals migrated into North America and other genera 

 passed from the latter continent into the more southern. On the 

 plains bordering on the Gulf of Mexico and those stretching north- 

 ward from Texas, the overgrown and unwieldy South American 

 Xenarthra met more highly organized forms, many themselves immi- 

 grants from Asia, and in the contest with them suffered extinction. 



GLYPTODON PETALIFERUS Cope. 



Plates 3-5. 



In the United States National Museum there are considerable parts 

 of a glyptodon which the writer is permitted to describe. It has 

 the catalogue number 6071. This specimen was found in 1908 by 

 Mr. O. S. Shelton near Wolfe City, Hunt County, Tex. This place 

 is in the northeast corner of the State and its position is approxi- 

 mately latitude 33° IC/ and longitude 96° 3'. In a letter written 

 November 18, 1908, Mr. Shelton stated that the remains had been 

 found along the banks of Middle Sulphur Creek, at a depth of about 

 9 feet from the surface. The bones lay on a bed of gravel and were 

 overlain with clay. Where the enveloping matrix is present it con- 

 sists of fine clay. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 51— No. 2147. 



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