ii 4 6 THE UNGULATES, OR HOOFED MAMMALS 



THE DINOTHERE 

 Family DlNOTHERIID^ 



A remarkable animal known as the dinothere (Dinotherium giganteum), the 

 remains of which are found in the Miocene and Pliocene rocks of Europe and India, 

 presents us with the most generalized type of Proboscidian yet known. In this 

 animal, which must have been fully as large as an elephant, there appears to have 

 been no upper tusks, but the extremity of the lower jaw was sharply bent down, 

 and terminated in a pair of very massive and somewhat curved tusks. As in the 

 elephants and mastodons, there were no canine teeth, and the cheek-teeth carried 

 transverse ridges. The whole of the permanent series of cheek-teeth were, how- 

 ever, in use at the same time, as in ordinary Ungulates, and their ridges were low 

 and simple, and either two or three in number. Very little else is known of the 

 skeleton of this strange animal, and there have been many conjectures as to the use 

 of the downwardly-curved lower tusks. Possibly the creature may have been more 

 or less aquatic in its habits, and have used these weapons to drag up water plants 

 from the beds and banks of lakes or rivers. On the other hand, it may equally well 

 have been purely terrestrial, and have used its tusks, after the manner of the African 

 elephant, in turning up the soil in search of roots and tubers. 



With this animal, an illustration of whose skull is given on p. 1147, our present 

 knowledge of the Proboscidians and their ancestors comes to an abrupt termination. 



THE SHORT-FOOTED UNGULATES 



SUBORDER Amblypoda 



There are several extinct groups of Ungulates differing so markedly from the 

 living forms that they cannot be included in any of the groups into which the lat- 

 ter are divided, and consequently have to be classed in groups by themselves. 



The name of short-footed Ungulates is applied to one of these groups which is 

 confined to the Eocene division of the Tertiary period, and is more developed in 

 the United States than in Europe. It is represented in both continents by the 

 coryphodons of the lower and middle Eocene beds, and in America by the uintatheres 

 of the upper Eocene. In these animals the feet, as shown in the figure on p. 742, 

 were very short, and were each provided with five toes, the mode of walking being 

 partly plantigrade. The molar teeth were of the type as shown in the figure on the 

 next page, having short crowns and the ridges arranged in a V-shape in those of 

 the upper jaw. The two bones in the fore-arm, as well as those in the lower leg, 

 were quite distinct from one another. 



The coryphodons were animals which may be compared in size to a bear, and 

 possessed the full typical number of forty-four teeth, with the tusks (canines) well 

 leveloped. They had no horn-like processes to the skull. In the fore-feet (see p. 

 742) only the terminal bones of the toes touched the ground, but in the hind 

 ones the whole sole was applied to the ground, in the same manner as in a bear. 



