BAL^ENODON. 



375 



By his delicate use of the graving-tool, Cuvier brought to 

 light that part with the two marsupial bones (fig. 134, a, a) 

 in their natural position. He thus demonstrated that there 

 had been buried in the soft fresh-water deposits, hardened in 

 after ages into the building- 

 stone of Paris, an animal 

 whose genus at the present 

 day is peculiar to America. 

 It is not uninteresting to re- 

 mark that the Peccari, the 

 nearest existing ally to the 

 old Cheer opotamus, is, like 

 the opossum, now peculiar 

 to America ; and that two 

 species of tapir, the nearest 

 living allies to the Lophi- 

 odon and Palseothere, exist 

 in South America. 



The marine deposits of 

 the miocene epoch shew the 

 remains of extinct genera of dolphins (Ziphius and Dioplodon) 

 and of whales (Balcenodon). Petrified cetaceous teeth and 

 ear-bones, called " cetotolites s (fig. 135) have been washed 

 out of previous strata into the 

 red crag of Suffolk. These 

 fossils belong to species dis- 

 tinct from any known existing 

 Cetacea, and which, probably, 



like Some Contemporary quad- Cetotolite or fossil ear-bone of Balmno- 



rupeds, retained fully-developed don 9 ibbosus ( Eed Cra %> Suffolk )- 

 characters which are embryonic and transitory in existing cog- 

 nate Mammals. The teeth of these Cetacea were determined 

 in 1840, the ear-bones in 1843. The vast numbers of these 

 fossils, and the proportion of phosphate of lime in them, 



Pelvis and marsupial bones of Dideljjhis 

 im (Eocene, Paris). 



Fia;. 135. 



