THE GROUND SLOTH GROUP 



Hi/ W. ]). Matt he IV 



N\]\\{\.\ Two centuries ago a Spanish colonist in the Viceroyalty of 

 Hueiios Aires, now the Arji-entine Re])ul)hc, (Hscovered the skeh-ton 

 of a hnye animal ///;/// rorpulrnfr j/ raro in the Rixcr Lujiin, a 

 few miles from the city. The skeleton was sent to Madrid, where it w;us 

 finally mounted and is still preserved in the Royal Museum. 



'J'liis was the first fossil skeleton ever mounted. It was recognized hy 

 the finder as uidike that of any animal of his acciuaintanee. But it was the 

 great Cuvier who recognized its relationship to the tree sloths and other 

 animals of the Kdentate ordci . and named it the Mcgdilicrmiii. Subse- 

 quently, in ISi^o, ( harles Darwin on his voyage in the Beagle, visited the 

 Argentine coasts and brought away \arious remains of this and other 

 extinct animals, and between 1.S4.") and iSliO sexcral more or less complete 

 skeletons of the Mcc/df/icriiuii and other huge "ground sloths," as they came 

 to be called, were sent to England and were studied and described by the 

 great anatomist Hidiard Owen. 



Since that time numerous fine skeletons of these animals ha\'e been 

 disinterred from the \ast loess or loam deposit which underlies the Pampas 

 of the Argentine and is known as the Pampean formation. They are pre- 

 served in various European and American museums, and a splendid series 

 of them is th<' pride of the two great nuiseums of Argentina, the Museo 

 National and Museo dc La Plata. 



A fine collection of these and other extinct nuimmals of South Anu'rica, 

 made by Senors .\meghino, Larro(|ue and Brachet, was exhibited at the 

 Paris Exposition of JSTN and passed into the possession of the late Pro- 

 fessor Cope. It was purchased for the .\mcrican Museum in 1900 by a 



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