446 LAND MAMMALS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE 



very unusual peculiarity of being bilobate, or having the crown 

 separated into two well-defined cusps. The upper canines in the 

 males were very large, relatively thin, recurved and sabreJike 

 tusks, with acute points and sharp edges, which must have been 

 terrible weapons, though it is difficult to see how they were 

 used ; probably the mouth was widely opened, so as to clear 

 the points of the tusks, and the animal then struck with them, 

 as a snake does with its fangs. The lower canine was very small 

 and was included in the incisor series, the shape and function 

 of which it had assumed. Thus, the fuintatheres, with their 

 toothless premaxillaries and, to all appearances, eight lower 

 incisors, formed a curious parallel to the true ruminants 

 (Pecora), and, as in the latter, they must have had a firm 

 elastic pad on the premaxillaries, against which the lower 

 incisors could effectively bite, when cropping the soft plants 

 which formed the diet of these great beasts. The grinding 

 teeth were low-crowned and surprisingly small in com- 

 parison with the size of the skull. The premolars and 

 molars were nearly alike and had two or more transverse 

 crests. 



Aside from the altogether exceptional character of the skull, 

 the skeleton was quite strikingly elephantine in appearance, 

 so much so, in fact, that these animals have repeatedly been 

 referred to the Proboscidea and some writers are still of the 

 opinion that the two orders were related. There is, however, 

 no sufficient ground for this view ; the undeniable likenesses are 

 much more probably to be ascribed to the operation of con- 

 vergent development. 



The neck was of moderate length, sufficiently long to enable 

 the animal to reach the ground with the lips, a necessity in the 

 absence of a proboscis. The body was very long and, as is 

 shown by the length and curvature of the ribs and the great 

 breadth of the hip-bones, extremely bulky. The limbs were 

 very massive, and the long bones had lost the marrow-cavities, 

 being filled with spongy bone, as in the elephants, ftitanotheres 



