342 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



by Thomas Jefferson. The giant sloth forms, however, as well as the 

 glyptodons came only as far as the southern row of States. Probably 

 the best preserved remains of the giant form found in the United 

 States (now in the National Museum) were encountered over 100 years 

 ago at Skiddaway Island on the coast of Georgia. This animal was 

 named Megatherium mirabile by Joseph Leidy, another early paleon- 

 tologist, often referred to as the father of American vertebrate 

 paleontology. 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION IN PANAMA 



Discovery of remains of the giant ground sloth in Panama, virtually 

 on the land bridge joining the two continents, was evidently made 

 quite independently by various people and at more than one locality. 

 The earliest record with which the Smithsonian Institution was 

 directly associated pertained to the finding of teeth and fragmentary 

 bones at a place called El Hatillo just outside the town of Pese in 

 the province of Herrera. These were found by an engineer, Caley 

 Johnson, and sent to the National Museum in 1915 by our colleague 

 James Zetek. They were identified by the former assistant curator of 

 vertebrate paleontology, Dr. James TV. Gidley, as belonging to the 

 extinct sloth Megatherium. I had the good fortune to be shown this 

 locality by Sr. Guillermo Arjona, then ( 1950) Governor of the province 

 of Herrera, who was involved in the original discovery and recalled as 

 a boy having seen there a number of very large bones. Another fossil 

 site, near but on the opposite side of Pese, which seems also to have 

 been known for many years by the local people, is on the finca of the 

 local hotelkeeper, Sr. Pablo Aued. Sr. Aued was a little uncertain 

 as to the exact date, but it may have been about 1915, or possibly 

 earlier, that fossil bones were collected on his ranch by a Frenchman 

 (whose name he did not recall). The materials excavated were 

 understood to have been shipped to France. 



Although the Pese localities were earlier known, it remained for the 

 people of Ocu to direct full attention to the discovery of "fossil bones 

 of gigantic animals 1 ' at La Coca, about 4 miles northwest of Ocu, also 

 in the province of Herrera. Credit for the La Coca discovery has been 

 given Manuel Valdivieso, a "campesino" of the Ocu district who 

 directed several of the townspeople to the occurrence in July 1949. 

 The remains collected at that time, under the enthusiastic leadership 

 of Joaquin Carrizo, manager of the Posada at Ocu, were placed on 

 display at the hotel. The discovery was given considerable publicity 

 in the Panama press and some of the early speculation attributed the 

 remains to dinosaurs. An interesting account of the find, by Dr. 

 Rodrigo Nunez, was published in the August 1949 issue of the 

 Panamanian magazine Eyocas. 



