190 



ANCIENT EDENTATES 



to the Auteaters of the New World are chiefly adaptive and have 

 nothing to do with real affinity, being merely an expression of a 

 similar mode of life, it is curious to note that here and there we 

 do find certain resemblances which do not seem to be susceptible 

 of the latter explanation. The jugal bone, absent in Munis, is 

 small in Miinnecopliaga ; the clavicle is absent and again small or 

 mdimentarv in the Anteaters ; it is large in other Edentates. 



Fig. 109. — Mauis. Manis rjigantea. Xy^r. 



The third trochanter is absent, as in Myrmecophaga (and the 

 Sloths). There are many scales on the body ; in MyrmeroiJhaga 

 there are traces of these structures on the tail, as also in 

 Tamandua. In the features mentioned, the ]\lyrmecophagidae 

 differ from either or from both of the two other American 

 families {i.e. Dasypodidae, Bradypodidae) and agree with Manis. 

 The facts are not a little remarkable. 



Order III. GANODONTA/ 



Allied to the Edentata, and apparently representing the 

 ancestral forms from which they, at any rate the Xenarthra 

 were derived, is the order of the Ganodonta. Of this order a 

 number of genera are now known, which can be ranged in a 

 series which more and more approaches the Edentata as we pass 

 from the older to the newer forms. This interesting and transi- 

 tional series will be made manifest by a description of the 

 characters of the various genera taken in their proper chrono- 



^ See Wortman, "The Ganodouta and their Relationship to the Edentata," 

 Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. ix. 1897, p- 69. 



