741 



MEGATHERIID.E. 



MEGATHERIIDjE. 



742 



than 5 feet wide, and its body 12 feet long*and 8 feet high; its feet 

 were a yard in length, and terminated by most gigantic claws ; its 

 tail was probably clad in armour, and much larger than the tail of 

 any other beast among extinct or living terrestrial Mammalia. Thus 



Bones of the pelvis of Megatherium, discovered by Sir Woodbine Parish, now 

 in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. The bones of the 

 left hind leg and several of those of the foot are restored nearly to their natural 

 place. (Dr. Buckland, ' Bridgewater Treatise.') 



curt. 



Tooth of Megatherium, one-third natural size. Clift. 



heavily constructed, and ponderously accoutred, it could neither run, 

 nor leap, nor climb, nor burrow under the ground, and iu all its 

 movement* must have been necessarily slow ; but what need of rapid 

 locomotion to an animal whose occupation of digging roots for food 

 was almost stationary ? And what need of speed for flight from foes, 

 to a creature whose giant carcass was encased in an impenetrable 

 cuirass, and who, by a single pat of his paw, or lash of his tail, could 

 in an instant have demolished the Couguar or the Crocodile ? Secure 

 within the panoply of his bony armour, where was the enemy that 

 would dare encounter this Leviathan of the Pampas ? or in what more 

 powerful creature can we find the cause that has effected the extir- 

 pation of his race ? His entire frame was an apparatus of colossal 

 mechanism, adapted exactly to the work it had to do ; strong and 

 ponderous, in proportion as this work was heavy, and calculated to 

 be the vehicle of life and enjoyment to a gigantic race of quadrupeds, 

 which, though they have ceased to bo counted among the living 

 inhabitant* of our planet, have, in their fossil bones, left behind them 

 imperishable monuments of the consummate skill with which they 

 were constructed. Each limb and fragment of a limb forming 



co-ordinate parts of a well-adjusted and perfect whole ; and through 

 all their deviations from the form and proportion of the limbs of 

 other quadrupeds, affording fresh proofs of the infinitely varied and 

 inexhaustible contrivances of creative wisdom." Much of this eloquent 

 passage is unassailable ; but Professor Owen has demonstrated most 

 clearly, and, we have reason to believe, to the entire satisfaction of 

 Dr. Buckland himself, that the tessellated shell or case found with 

 the Salado remains did not belong to the Megatherium, whose tegu- 

 mentary covering seems to have been not unlike that of the Ant- 

 Eaters and Sloths, but to a Dasypodoid or Armadillo-like gigantic 

 extinct animal, to which Professor Owen has assigned the name of 

 Glyptodon, whose hind foot, like the fore, appears to be expressly 

 modified to form a base to a column destined to support an enormous 

 incumbent weight ; whilst in the Megatherium the toes were free to 

 be developed into long and compressed claws, such as form the com- 

 pensating weapons of defence of the hair-clad Sloths and Ant-Eaters. 

 [GLYPTODON.] Professor Owen, in his paper read to the Geological 

 Society of London, entitled, ' A Description of a Tooth and Part of 

 the Skeleton of the Glyptodon, a large quadruped of the Edentate 

 Order,' to which belongs the tessellated bony armour figured by 

 Mr. Clift in his ' Memoir on the Remains of the Megatherium brought 

 to England by Sir Woodbine Parish,' showed that the portions of 

 tessellated armour described and figured by Weiss ('Berlin Trans.,' 

 1827) are identical in structure with those brought to England by Sir 

 Woodbine Parish, and that the bones which were found with the 

 armour in both cases are the same in their characters, and therefore 

 that they belonged to animals specifically identical. He next entered 

 upon the inquiry: Had the Megatherium a bony armour? and he 

 concluded, from a comparison of its skeleton with that of the Arma- 

 dilloes, that it had not. In the pelvis of the Armadillo there are 12 

 sacral vertebrae anchylosed together, and the spines of the vertebrae 

 are greatly developed anterio-posteriorly, forming a continuous vertical 

 ridge of bone, bearing immediately the superincumbent weight. In 

 the Megathere the sacral vertebra) are only 4 in number, and are not 

 anchylosed, and the spinous processes are comparatively small, not 

 locked together, as in the Armadifloes, but separated by intervals as iu 

 the Sloths. In the Armadilloes, the weight of the cuirass is transferred 

 from the sacrum to the thigh bones by two points on each side. One 

 of them, the ischium, is anchylosed to the posterior part of the 

 sacrum, the other point is formed by the conversion of the iliac bone 

 into a stout three-sided beam passing straight from the thigh joint to 

 abut against the anterior part of the sacrum, where the weight of 

 the shell is greatest, a structure which is wanting in the Megathere. 

 In no species of Armadillo is the ilium expanded, while in the 

 Megathere it is greatly developed, resembling that of the Elephant 

 in size, form, and position ; and among the Edentata the nearest 

 approach in this portion of the skeleton is to be found among the 

 Sloths and Ant-Eaters. The most striking point however in the 

 structure of the Armadilloes, with reference to the support of a bony 

 covering, is the remarkable production of a part of the vertebra from 

 above the anterior articular process on each side, in a straight direction 

 upwards, outwards, and forwards, [to nearly the level of the true 

 spinous processes. Now these oblique processes, which are developed 

 only in the loricated Edentata, beautifully correspond in form and 

 use with the tie-bearers in the architecture of a roof, and are entirely 

 wanting in the Megathere, the structure of this part of the vertebral 

 column of that animal corresponding with the character of the 

 vertebra of the hair-clad Sloths and Ant-Eaters. Professor Owen 

 noticed other supposed adaptations in the skeleton of the Megathere 

 to sustain a bony covering, as the breadth of the ribs, but the ribs of 

 the Sloths and Ant-Eaters are broader than those of the Armadilloes. 



The paper contained a tabular account of the discovery of twelve 

 skeletons of the Megathere, and in no instance did any portion of 

 bony armour occur with or near the bone.* A notice was also given 

 of the remains of a Glyptodon, found in the left bank of the Pedernal 

 before its junction with the Sala, an affluent of the Rio Santo, near 

 Monte Video, and preserved in the museum of that town. From 

 the accounts which have been given of these remains, they appear to 

 have belonged to the same species as that described in the paper. An 

 allusion was also made to some portions of bony armour obtained in 

 the Rio Seco, in the Banda Oriental, and similar in structure to the 

 specimen of the Pedernal. One of the portions was the covering for 

 the tail. It was hollow to its extremity, and presented in its con- 

 cavity vestiges of caudal vertebrae very distant from each other. 



In conclusion, Professor Owen observes, that having brought 

 together evidence of the remains of five specimens (found in the Rio 

 Seeo, Rio Janeiro, Villanueva, Pedernal, and the Bauda Oriental) of 



Sir Woodbine Parish, in May, 1839, communicated to the writer of this 

 article a letter received by him, giving information of the discovery of an almost 

 entire skeleton of an adult Megatherium on the banks of the Rio de la Matanza, 

 with all the vertebra of the body, all the ribs, all the teeth, the head, and the 

 legs i n short, with the whole of the bones except the tail and one foot. Close 

 to it was the skeleton of a 'Tatou gigantesque ' (Glyptodon probably), with its 

 bony armour complete. There was also found a very small and perfect Mega- 

 therium, which must have been only just born at the epoch of destruction. No 

 mention is made of any traces of bony armour or shell about the Mcgatlieria. 

 In the old animal only one foot is wanting. It has been suggested that the 

 so-called young Megatherium may possibly be a skeleton of Sceliilotltcrium. 



