SOME EARLY MAMMALS 
251 
ridged and pointed grinding surfaces indicate that they were 
intended to he applied to the coarser kinds of vegetable substances. 
According to Owen, certain fossils from the lignite deposits of 
Soisson, Laon, and Meudon, in France, belong to Coryphodon, 
Speaking of a tooth from Soisson, Cuvier said that the entire 
skeleton was found indicating an animal almost as large as a bull, 
but that the workmen employed in the sand-pit (sdbliere) unfor- 
tunately preserved only that one tooth. The first specimen of 
Coryphodon discovered in America was found in 1871, near 
Evanston, Wyoming, by Mr. William Cleburne, while engaged 
as surveyor for the Union Pacific Railroad, who secured chiefly 
its teeth and vertebrae. More or less perfect specimens were 
afterwards obtained by Cope during his explorations in New 
Mexico, under the survey of Captain Wheeler. Regarded merely 
as a fossil, it is characteristic of the Lower Eocene of Europe and 
America ; in North America it is confined to the Wasatch and 
Wind River epochs, and is absent from the Upper Eocene of both 
countries. 
Coryphodon is particularly interesting on account of the primi- 
tive features of its skeleton ; the brain was very small and of a 
low type. I rofessor Cope places it, with its allied forms, in a 
separate order, to which he gives the name Amblypoda, on 
account of their elephantine limbs and probable ambling gait.^ 
C. hamatus was about six feet long ; while some species were 
no larger than a tapir, others were as big as an ox (see Plate XL.). 
Professor Cope thinks that in general appearance the Corypho- 
dons resembled the bear more than any other living animal, with 
the important exception that in their feet they were like elephants. 
^ Mr. Charles Earle, after a careful revision of this family, has suggested that 
Cope’s species should be greatly reduced in number, many of them in his 
opinion being only due to differences of age and sex. Bathmodon, Metalo- 
phodon, Ectodon, Manteodon may all be included in the genus Coryphodon. 
