PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE OSTEOLOG-Y OF THE GENUS GLYPTODON. 
37 
extracted in the preceding five years from the caverns of Brazil. Among the rest the 
writer describes : — 
“ 6°. Hoplophorus , a genus very remarkable for the heavy proportions of its species, 
for their gigantic size, as well as for the singular manner in which it combines different 
types of organization ; however, their characters approximate them most nearly to the 
Sloth family. These strange animals were armed with a cuirass which covered all the 
upper part of the body, and which was composed of little hexagonal scutes, except in 
the middle of the body, where the scutes took a quadrate form, and were disposed in 
innumerable transverse bands. The bones of the trunk, as well as the great bones of 
the extremities, are also very similar to those of the Tatous, and particularly to those of 
the Cachicames ; but the bones which compose the feet are so shortened and have their 
articular faces so flattened, that nothing similar is to be seen in any animal skeleton, 
and that it is inconceivable how such feet should have been used in digging. The form 
of the teeth also indicates that these singular animals could feed only on vegetable sub- 
stances, and it is to be supposed that they grazed after the fashion of the great Pachy- 
derms. However this may be, the Hoplophorus , of which M. Lund describes two species, 
present the peculiarity, hitherto regarded as special to the Sloth, of having a descending 
branch to the zygomatic arch. These two species were as large as an ox. Fragments 
of the skeletons have already been described by MM. Weiss and D’Alton of Berlin.” — 
Loc. cit. pp. 572, 573. 
A summary of Lund’s researches, despatched by him from Lagoa Santa on November 
5, 1838, and published in the Ann ales des Sciences Naturelles for 1839, under the title 
of “ Coup d’ceil sur les especes eteintes de mammiferes de Bresil : extrait de quelques 
memoires presentes a l’Academie Boyale des Sciences de Copenhague,” gives a sub- 
stantially similar account of Hoplophorus. The species Hoplophorus Selloi is identified 
with the cuirassed animal described and figured by Weiss and D’Alton. 
The sixth volume of the second series of the Transactions of the Geological Society 
contains an elaborate memoir by Professor Owen* on the bones associated with the 
dermal armour, figured by Mr. Clift in the memoir already cited ; and on certain teeth, 
upon which the genus Glyptodon was founded by the same writer, in Sir Woodbine 
Parish’s work on Buenos Ayres 'j*. 
Professor Owen considers these remains to be specifically identical with those collected 
by Sellow, and described by Weiss and D’Alton ; so that if Lund was right in ascribing 
the same fossils to his genus Hoplophorus, Glyptodon becomes a synonym of the latter. 
In the memoir under consideration the general form and the minute structure of the 
* “ Descriptions of a tooth and part of the skeleton of the Glyptodon clavipes, a large quadruped of the eden- 
tate order, to which belongs the tessellated bony armour described and figured by Mr. Clift in the former volume 
of the Transactions of the Geological Society, with a consideration of the question whether the Megatherium 
possessed an analogous dermal armour.” By Richard Owen, Esq., F.G.S., F.R.S. (Read March 23rd, 1839 : 
an abstract of this paper appeared in No. 62 of the ‘ Proceedings.’) 
f * Buenos Ayres and the provinces of the Rio de la Plata,’ 1838, p. 178 e. 
