GIANT LAND-TORTOISES 
In the long-past days when the plains of India were the 
home of the mighty sivatherium and of still more gigantic 
elephants and mastodons, while its rivers were tenanted 
by hippopotamuses and huge long-snouted gharial-like 
crocodiles, that country was likewise inhabited by the 
most gigantic land-tortoise of which we at present have 
any knowledge. When fragments of its fossilised shell 
and more or less nearly complete specimens of its limb- 
bones came under the notice of its original describers, it 
was thought, indeed, that they indicated a creature of 
truly colossal proportions, the length of the shell in a 
straight line being estimated at no less than 12 ft. 3 in. 
In a restoration of the shell made under the superintend- 
ence of the discoverers of the species, and still exhibited 
in the geological department of the Natural History 
Museum, the length was reduced to a little over eight 
feet. But even these reduced dimensions appear to be 
considerably in excess of the reality, and it is probable 
that the maximum length did not much exceed six feet. 
A shell of this size considerably exceeds, however, that of 
any modern land-tortoise, so that the Siwalik tortoise, or 
Testudo atlas, as it is scientifically called, is fully entitled 
to rank as the real giant of its kind. 
But the Siwalik tortoise was by no means the only 
giant species inhabiting India during the Pliocene epoch, 
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