362 
PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE MEGATHERIUM. 
M. Auguste St. Hilaire, “ which announces,” he says, “ that the Megatherium had 
pushed its affinity to the Armadillos so far as to be covered like them with a scaly 
cuirass.” 
This opinion derived apparent confirmation from the description by Professor Weiss 
of portions of an osseous tessellated dermal armour of some gigantic quadruped, sent 
to Berlin by the traveller Sellow, which armour he figures, and attributes to the 
Megatherium, in a “ Geological memoir on the Provinces of S. Pedro do Sal and the 
Banda Oriental,” published in 1827*. 
In the year 1832, a highly valuable and important collection of the bones of the 
Megatherium, discovered in the Rio Salado, with a portion of a bony tessellated 
dermal covering of an animal, found in Lake Averias, province of Buenos Ayres, 
indicative of a frame as great as that of the skeleton from the Rio Salado, was 
transmitted from Buenos Ayres by Sir Woodbine Parish, K.H., and presented by 
him to the Royal College of Surgeons. These specimens formed the subject of a 
memoir communicated by William Clift, Esq., F.R.S., to the Geological Society, 
June 13, 1832'!', in w'hich, although, with the characteristic caution of the author, the 
armour is not directly affirmed to belong to the Megatherium, nothing is stated to 
prevent the inference that it formed part of the ‘ Remains’ of that animal which it is 
the object of the memoir to describe ; and, in the description of the map engraved in 
pi. 43, the specimen figured in pi. 46, with other portions of the bony armour, are 
comprehended amongst “those Remains of the Megatherium which have hitherto 
been sent to Europe Further countenance to the later opinion of Cuvier as to 
the affinities of the Megatherium to the Armadillo, was afforded by a few remarks in 
the text of Mr. Clsft’s memoir: thus, in noticing the “ bony or pseudo-cartilaginous 
pieces which unite the true ribs to the sternum,” Mr. Clift adds, “as is also 
the case in the Armadillo §.” And in the description of the caudal vertebrae, he 
remarks, “ they have the inferior spines (/’. e. the chevron or V-shaped bones), mani- 
festing in this their relation to other Edentata, as the Myrmecophagce and Dasy- 
The additional parts of the Megatherium, supplied by Sir Woodbine Parish, and 
deficient in the skeleton at Madrid, were two of the ossified cartilages of the ribs, 
two of the smaller bones of the sternum, twelve caudal vertebrae, and ten of the 
separate ‘ chevron bones,’ partly belonging to them and partly indicating other 
caudal vertebrae: they also included a part of the os hyoides. Mr. Clift, with his 
accustomed ingenuity and artistic ability, gives at one view an idea of “ all the parts 
hitherto known, or supposed to be known,” of the Megatherium, by taking as his 
basis the outline of the view of the skeleton given by Pander and D’Alton in the 
first plate of their work ; leaving in simple outline those parts which are present in 
* Abhandlungen der Kdn. Akad. der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1827. 
t Geological Transactions, 2nd series, vol. iii. p. 437. 
J Ibid. Description of the Plates. § Ibid. p. 439. 
II Ibid. p. 444. 
