34-6 PALEONTOLOGY 



malia. In systematic characters, Zeuglodon typifies a distinct 

 family or group, intermediate between Cctacca proper and 

 Sircnia. 



Of the latter family or order, however, represented at the 

 present day by the Dugongs, Manatees, and Stellerians or 

 Arctic Manatees (if the species still survives), there were 

 abundant and more widely distributed representatives during 

 the miocene period, having, upon the whole, the nearest 

 affinity with the existing African Manatee (Manatus Senega- 

 lensis), but with associated characters of the Dugong (Halicore). 

 There were, e. g., two incisive tusks in the upper jaw, and four 

 or five small incisors along the deflected part of each ramus of 

 the lower jaw. The upper molars, with three roots, were 

 thickly enamelled, like those of the Manatee, but with a pat- 

 tern of grinding surface which led Cuvier to attribute detached 

 specimens to a small species of Hippopotamus. The lower 

 molars had two roots. All the bones have the dense or solid 

 structure of those of the Sirenia. On the remains of this 

 remarkable amphibious Mammal, discovered by Kaup in 1838, 

 in the miocene beds at Eppelsheim, he founded the genus Hali- 

 therium. Other remains have been discovered in Piedmont, 

 Aste, and many parts of France, from the " calcaire grossier" 

 of the Gironde, containing Lophiodont fossils, up to the plio- 

 cene near Montpellier ; at which period the Halitherium 

 seems to have become extinct. 



Genus Macrotherium, Lartet. — The edentate order, which 

 is so abundantly and variously represented in South America, 

 which has its Orycteropes and Pangolins in Africa, and its 

 Manises in tropical Asia, has no living representative in 

 Europe. Perhaps the most unexpected form of Mammal to 

 be revealed by fossil remains from European tertiary deposits, 

 after a, Marsupial, was a member of the edentate order. 

 Cuvier, by whom the evidence of this extinct animal was firs! 

 mad* 1 known, prefaces his description <>l the single mutilated 



