ON PLATYGONUS, AN EXTINCT G-ENTJS ALLIED TO THE PECCARIES. 



BY PROF. JOSEPH LEIDY. 



Platygomis is an extinct genus, closely related with the Peccaries, Dico- 

 tyles, of which two species, the D. labiatiis and D. tajassn, live in South 

 America, and according to Prof. Cope, a third, the D. angiilattis, in North 

 America extending up to Texas. The remains of Platygomis belong to the 

 quaternary formations of North America. 



Recently, the writer procured through purchase for the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, from the able naturahst and explorer, Prof. 

 Henr)- A. Ward, of Rochester, New York, a collection of remarkably well- 

 preserved remains of two adult individuals of Platygoims compressus, which 

 were found in making a railway excavation, in a gravel bank, a few miles 

 from Rochester. Of one individual there is the greater part of the skeleton, 

 consisting of the nearly perfect skull with the teeth, represented in figure i, 

 plate VIII., twenty-one vertebrae, the sacrum, the long bones of both pairs 

 of limbs, the imperfect scapulae, an innominatum and part of a second, both 

 pairs of principal metacarpals, one pair of principal metatarsals, an astraga- 

 lus, a calcaneum, portions of a sternum and fragments of three ribs. Of 

 the second individual there is a less perfect skull with the upper teeth, but 

 without the mandible. 



In the collection of Prof O. C. Marsh, at Yale College, New Haven, 

 Conn., I saw the less well-preserved remains of half a dozen skeletons of the 

 same species of Platygomis, found near Columbus, Ohio. 



Formerly I described a nearly complete skull, admirably preserved, of 

 an individual which though nearly adult had not yet shed the temporary 

 molar teeth. It was found in a cave in Kentucky in 1805, and remained in 

 the collection of the American Philosophical Society nearly half a centuiy 

 before its character was discovered. The specimen is described and figured 

 in the Transactions of the Society for 1856, page 323, plates XXXV. 

 and XXXVI. 



The genus was originally made known by Dr. John L. Le Conte, from 

 remains found in the crevices of the lead-bearing rocks near Galena, Illinois. 



