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VI. — Description of a Tooth and Part of the Skeleton of the Glyptodon cla- 

 vipes, a large Quadruped of the Edentate Order, to which belongs the 

 Tesselated Bony Armour described and figured by Mr. Clift in the former 

 Volume of the Transactions of the Geological Society ; with a consideration 

 of the question whether the Megatherium possessed an analogous Dermal 

 Armour. 



By RICHARD OWEN, Esq., F.G.S., F.R.S. 



[Read March 23rd, 1839.] 



Plates X. XL XII. and XIII. 



X HE first notice of the discovery of the osseous remains of the skeleton of a 

 large edentate Mammal associated with fragments of a tesselated bony armour, 

 similar to that of the Armadillo, appears in the note appended to the end of 

 Cuvier's chapter on the Megatherium, in the 4to edition of the Ossemens Fossiles, 

 published in 1823. 



This notice occurs in an extract from a Letter addressed by D. Damasio Lar- 

 ranaga. Cure of Montevideo, to M. Auguste St, Hilaire. The facts stated in this 

 extract are the following : — A femur was discovered in the Rio del Sauce, branche 

 du Saulis-Grande, which weighed seven pounds ; it was short, but might be from 

 six to eight inches in width ; it resembled in every respect the femur of an Arma- 

 dillo ; with it was found a portion of tesselated bony armour, of which the Cure 

 promises to send one of the component pieces (une de ces ecailles) to M. Auguste 

 GeofFroi. The tail was very short and very stout (tres-grosse) ; it had, in like man- 

 ner, a bony armour (des ecussons), but this was not verticillate, or disposed in 

 rings. These fossils are stated to have been met with near the surface of the earth, 

 in alluvium, or strata of" transport, indicative of a very recent epoch ; similar fos- 

 sils are said to occur in analogous strata near the lake Mirim, on the frontier of 

 the Portuguese colonies. 



The notion that the fossils here mentioned belonged to the Megatherium rests 

 solely on the circumstance of the worthy Cure having inserted the word Megathe- 

 rium as the synonym of his gigantic Dasypus : " Je ne vous ecris point sur mon 

 Dasypus {Megatherium, Cuv.), parceque je me propose d'en faire I'objet d'un m^- 



VOL. VI. SECOND SERIES. M 



