216 MAMMALS. 



Zeuglodonttd^. — Zeuglodon CETOiDES of Owen is a great fossil Whale -with peculiarly formed 

 teeth ; according to Giebel, it is intermediate between the Whales and the Seals. The teeth 

 give some countenance to this idea, appearing when looked at transversely to be formed somewhat 

 on the plan of those of the Seal ; at any rate, more so than on the j)lan of the teeth of the 

 Dolphins ; but its character is at once settled by its possessing a single nostril with an upward 

 aspect above and near the orbits, being the usual structure of the spout-hole in Whales, and by 

 its immense bulk, seventy feet in length, either of which goes far to prove it a cetacean. The 

 entire skeleton has been obtained from the miocene deposits of Alabama, so that we know 

 nearly as much as we can ever expect to do of this creature. Its head was long and narrow. 

 The teeth indicate a carnivorous diet, and Prof. Owen points out that their mode of succession 

 conforms more to the general mammalian tj'pe than to that of the living Cetaceans ; certain teeth 

 displacing and succeeding each other vertically. 



The first teeth were found at Malta, and are preserved in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge. 

 Remains have since been found at various places in America. These were described by Dr. Harlan 

 under the name of Basii.osaurus, the king of the Saurians, he having taken it for a reptile. 

 Arkansas, South Carolina, and Alabama, are the American districts in which its remains have been 

 met with. Respecting this creature Sir Charles Lyell says, that its colossal bones are so plentiful 

 in the interior of Clarke county, as to be characteristic of the formation, an eocene white rotten 

 limestone. The vertebral column of one skeleton found by Dr. Buckley, at a spot visited by him, 

 extended to the length of nearly seventy feet, and not far ofi' part of another back-bone, nearly fifty 

 feet long was dug up. He obtained evidence during a short excursion, of so many localities of this 

 fossil animal, within a distance of ten miles, as to lead him to conclude that they must have 

 belonged to at least forty distinct individuals.* 



To this family probably belongs a new genus, Pontogeneiis priscus, described by Leidy from a 

 cervical vertebra, and of which remains have been found in Louisiana and Carolina. 



* Lyell, " Elements of Geology," 6th edition, 1865, p. 308. 



