THE EDENTATA, OR ANIMALS POOR IN TEETH. 125 



any of its contemporaries or any portion of the 

 living animals, and only asks us to imagine round 

 about him, and back to his own day, a wealth of 

 forms that cannot be conceived in too great a variety. 



From the Tertiary strata of South America 

 our knowledge of which, however, is very meagre 

 we have no Edentates. In North America a few 

 forms, such as the Moropus (of the size of a tapir) 

 have been traced back to the Miocene. This fact, 

 and the frequent occurrence in Nebraska of the re- 

 mains of Giant Sloths from the transition period of 

 the New Tertiary to the Diluvium, induces Marsh 

 to dispute the prevailing idea that the Diluvial 

 Edentata spread from the area of their distribution 

 in the south, northwards ; he maintains that it is 

 more probable that they migrated from the north, 

 southwards. 



Fossil remains of Edentata have only rarely 

 been discovered in Europe. We have the Macro- 

 therium from the Middle Miocene of Sansan 

 (France) with its peculiar retractile claws. To 

 judge from the character of its limbs, it might 

 have been a climber, but can scarcely have been 

 this, for, as Gaudry says, it cannot often have 

 come across trees strong enough for such exercises. 

 The inexhaustible beds of Pikermi (Upper Miocene) 



