GIANT LAND'TORTOISES 



In the long-past days when the plains of India were the 

 home of the mighty sivatherium and of still more gigantic 

 elephants and mastodons, while its rivers were tenanted 

 by hippopotamuses and huge long-snouted gharial-like 

 crocodiles, that country was likewise inhabited by the 

 most gigantic land-tortoise of which we at present have 

 any knowledge. When fragments of its fossilised shell 

 and more or less nearly complete specimens of its limb- 

 bones came under the notice of its original describers, it 

 was thought, indeed, that they indicated a creature of 

 truly colossal proportions, the length of the shell in a 

 straight line being estimated at no less than 12 ft, 3 in. 

 In a restoration of the shell made under the superintend- 

 ence of the discoverers of the species, and still exhibited 

 in the geological department of the Natural History 

 Museum, the length was reduced to a little over eight 

 feet. But even these reduced dimensions appear to be 

 considerably in excess of the reality, and it is probable 

 that the maximum length did not much exceed six feet. 

 A shell of this size considerably exceeds, however, that of 

 any modern land-tortoise, so that the Siwalik tortoise, or 

 Testudo atlas, as it is scientifically called, is fully entitled 

 to rank as the real giant of its kind. 



But the Siwalik tortoise was by no means the only 

 giant species inhabiting India during the Pliocene epoch, 



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