NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 127 



main points of difference in contrast to Elasmodontomys are: 

 Reentrant enamel folds less nearly transverse, slanting for- 

 ward at an angle of about 21 instead of about 50; the man- 

 dibular symphysis longer, extending back beyond the middle 

 of the first molar instead of barely to the middle of the pre- 

 molar; shaft of the lower incisor not extending behind the 

 symphysis instead of far beyond it to terminate beneath the 

 middle of the second molar. The incisors show a shallow 

 depression on their front face, slightly more marked in the 

 lower than in the upper pair. The skull of Elasmodontomys 

 was about 5 inches long and proportionately broader than in 

 the Cuban Capromys pilorides. Anthony (1918) has well 

 illustrated the principal bones of the skeleton. He shows that 

 the sacrum consists of four well-fused vertebrae and that the 

 tail was probably short. It seems to have been a heavy- 

 bodied animal, and its short phalanges indicate terrestrial 

 rather than climbing habits. 



According to the brief description of Oviedo, the "Quemi" 

 resembled the hutia in color but was larger. That it was util- 

 ized by the natives of Hispaniola as a food animal is indicated 

 by the presence of its limb bones at a depth of about 4 feet in 

 a kitchen midden near the entrance of a cave at Boca del 

 Infierno, in the Samana Bay region, Dominican Republic 

 (Miller, 1929c). It must have become extinct soon after the 

 coming of the Spaniards, probably about the first half of the 

 sixteenth century. As to its representative on Puerto Rico, 

 Elasmodontomys, nothing is known. Anthony found its bones 

 "well bedded in the red stalactite formation, the deeper 

 layers of the cave deposit," so that it may have died out at an 

 earlier time. 



Here may be mentioned appropriately a third but much 

 larger member of the same group, a rodent almost as large as 

 a black bear, to which Cope (1868) gave the name Amblyrhiza 

 inundata and later synonyms based on single teeth of the same 

 animal. These teeth were discovered in a cargo of cave earth 

 sent to Philadelphia from the island of Anguilla at the extreme 

 northeastern point of the Antillean chain. Additional frag- 

 ments were later discovered in a cave on the adjacent island 

 of St. Martin. More recently several fragments, including a 

 large part of a skull and portions of the palate and incisors, 

 have come to light in the museums at Leiden and Delft, 



