VIII GIANT ARMADILLO 179 
5:1, with a large intestine of no less than 7 feet; D. vellerosus 
4°35 and 66. 
Priodon is the giant of its race. This Armadillo may 
reach a leneth of 3 feet to the base of the tail. The tail is 
some 20 inches long. The large number of teeth has been already 
noticed. There are twelve or thirteen bands. Other points 
in the structure of this genus have already been mentioned, and 
need not be recapitulated. This Armadillo feeds upon termites 
and carrion. 
Scleropleura is unfortunately but imperfectly known. The 
single species, named by Milne-Edwards! S. bruneti, is apparently 
a very rare inhabitant of Brazil. It is known by a single skin, 
which was tanned by the hunter who obtained it. Thus the 
hair, if any, has dropped out. The plates in the skin are 
deficient along the back and even upon the top of the head, and 
are barely represented upon the tail posteriorly. The ears are 
small and distant from each other. The tail is longish, about 
one-third of the length of the body. The total length of the 
creature including the tail is rather more than a foot and a half. 
The hunter who obtained it regarded it as a hybrid between an 
Armadillo and an Anteater. 
Extinct Xenarthra.—There are a good many extinct forms 
of Armadillo, apart of course from the Glyptodons.  Peltephilus 
is referred to later (p. 186). Dasypus was represented by a large 
form, 6 feet long, with a skull of one foot in length. The genus 
Hutatus was also large. The carapace was formed of thirty-three 
distinct bands, of which the last twelve are soldered together, but 
not fused into a shield as in Dasypus, etc. 
An extinct group of American Edentates, termed the GRavI- 
GRADA are somewhat intermediate between the Sloths and the 
Anteaters. A number of the genera are well known from com- 
plete skeletons. 
One of the typical forms of this group is Mylodon, which, 
together with its immediate allies, is often placed in a separate 
family, Mylodontidae. 
Mylodon itself was a large creature, as big as a Ihinoceros. 
It was covered externally by armour in the skin, which did not 
form a massive armature as in the Glyptodonts, but was in the 
» 1 Milne-Edwards, Nouv. Arch. Mus. vii. 1871, p. 177. 
2 See especially Lydekker, An. Mus. La Plata, Pal. Arg. iii. 1894. 
