GIGANTIC GLYPTODONS 
a most effective weapon for a giant. Along the sides of its extremity this 
club is marked by a number of oval, depressed disks, showing a sculptured 
pattern of ridges and grooves radiating from the center, and some of them 
attaining a length of six or seven inches. From the structure of their 
sculpture it seems evident that during life these disks formed the bases of 
huge horns projecting at right angles to the tail, which would thus have 
formed a veritable cheval de frise. If, as is quite probable, these horns 
were as long as those of the common African rhinoceros, the tail of the dedi- 
curus must have presented a most extraordinary appearance as it dragged 
on the ground behind its owner (for it is impossible to believe any muscles 
could have raised such a stupendous structure). The use of these horny 
appendages is, however, hard indeed to guess, since the creature was amply 
protected by the underlying bone; and it is therefore probable that they 
must come under the category of ornamental appendages. Be this as it 
may, with its bristle-clad body and horned tail, the club-tailed glyptodon 
may well lay claim to the right of being one of the most extraordinary 
creatures that ever walked this earth during the whole of the Tertiary 
period.” ® 
These ring-tailed glyptodons seem to be the direct descendants 
of the pygmy ancestors with which the race began in the early 
Tertiary. Their habits were probably much like those of 
modern plant-eating armadillos (for the glyptodons were exclu- 
sively vegetable feeders), and the big ones seem to have been 
fond of retiring into caves. 
“When standing with the edges of its impenetrable carapace resting 
on the ground, its mail-crowned head partially withdrawn within the front 
aperture of its shell, and only the lower portions of the limbs exposed, a 
glyptodon must have been safe from all foes save savage man, and even he 
must have had a tough job to slaughter the monster, if, indeed, he ever 
succeeded in doing so. That man did exist with the later glyptodons . . . 
is proved by more than one kind of evidence. Probably the empty cara- 
paces of the larger members of the group were employed by the primitive 
inhabitants of Argentina as huts; and it is said that they are sometimes 
even so used at the present day by the Indians.” ® 
In his interesting and valuable book, ‘(Notes of a Naturalist in South 
America” (London, 1887), Mr. John Ball, F.R.S., mentions the scientific 
labors among the Indians near Bahia Blanca, on the northern border of 
Patagonia, of a learned gentleman, M. Georges Claraz, who told him that 
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