198 



FORMATIONS OF THE 



Every specimen as yet brought from the Bad Lands, proves to be of species that 

 became exterminated before the mammoth and mastodon lived, and differ in their 

 specific character, not alone from all living animals, but also from all fossils ob- 

 tained even from cotemporaneous geological formations elsewhere. 



Along with a single existing genus, the Rhinoceros, many new genera never before 

 known to science have been discovered, and some, to us at this day, anomalous fami- 

 lies, which combine in their anatomy structures now found only in different orders. 

 They form, indeed, connecting links between the pachyderms, plantigrades, and 

 digitigrades. For example, in one of the specimens from this strange locality, de- 

 scribed by Dr. Leidy under the name of ArcMoiherium, we find united characters 

 belonging now to the above three orders ; for the molar teeth are constructed after 

 the model of those of the hog, peccary, and babyroussa; the canines as in the bear; 

 while the upper part of the skull, the cheek-bones, and the temporal fossa assume 

 the form and dimensions which belong to the cat tribe. Another, the Oreodon of 

 Leidy, has grinding teeth like the elk and deer, with canines resembling the omni- 

 vorous thick-skinned animals ; being, in fact, a race which lived both on flesh and 

 vegetables, and yet chewed the cud like our cloven-footed grazers. 



Associated with these extinct races, we behold also, in the Mauvaises Terres, 

 abundant remains of fossil pachydermata, of gigantic dimensions, and allied in their 

 anatomy to that singular family of proboscidate animals, of which the tapir may be 

 taken as a living type. These form a connecting link between the tapir and the 

 rhinoceros ; while, in the structure of their grinders, they are intermediate between 

 the daman and rhinoceros ; by their canines and incisors, they connect the tapir 

 with the horse, on the one hand, and with the peccary and hog on the other. They 

 belong to the same genus of which the labours of the great Cuvier first disclosed 

 the history, under the name of Palceotherium, in publishing his description of the 

 fossil bones exhumed from the gypsum quarries of Montmartre, near Paris, but are 

 of distinct species ; and one, at least, of this genus, discovered in the Bad Lands 

 (Palceotheriwn Proutii), must have attained a much larger size than any which the 

 Paris basin afforded. In a green, argillo-calcareous, indurated stratum, situated 

 within ten feet of the base of the section, a jaw of this species was found, measuring, 

 as it lay in its matrix, five feet along the range of the teeth, but in such a friable 

 condition, that only a portion of it could be dislodged ; and this, notwithstanding 

 all the precautions used in packing and transportation, fell to pieces before reaching 

 Indiana. 



A nearly entire skeleton of the same animal was discovered, in a similar posi- 

 tion, which measured, as it lay embedded, eighteen feet in length, and nine feet in 

 height. But here, as in the former case, the crumbling condition of the bones ren- 

 dered it impossible to disinter them whole ; and the means of transportation to the 

 Missouri were insufficient, even if these interesting remains could have been ex- 

 tracted in good condition. 



Some teeth and imperfect jaws, from the same bed, appear to belong to a genus 

 established, in 1847, by Dr. Leidy, under the name of Poebrotherium, an animal 

 which he considers intermediate between the Doreatherium and the Anopht7ierium. 



Many bones, skulls, and teeth were collected from a flesh-coloured, indurated, 



