THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
he had collected evidence among the Indians “‘which seemed to prove, that 
the Glyptodon survived in Patagonia down to a comparatively recent 
period, and that the tradition of ils presence is preserved in the stories and 
songs of the natives.” 
Along with these great “tortoise armadillos’”— the glypto- 
dons — lived the ancestors of the true armadillos. Their re- 
mains are not numcrous in museums, but such as have been 
studied are very similar to their modern descendants, showing 
how conservative this group has been, and, incidentally, how 
little change has taken place for ages in the climate or geography 
of South America. 
Some rather obscure fossils of the lowest Eocene rocks of 
North America, deemed by some authorities ancestral to the 
Edentata, are classified in an order Ganodonta. 
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