skeleton alone ; but these are pigmies compared with the mighty iguan- 
odon, whose fossil remains indicate a creature 70 feet or more in length. 
« Imagine this reptile,” says one of our geologists, “ reinvest its huge 
bones with the muscles and other integuments, add the armour of scales, 
and behold a lizard standing six feet from the ground, on limbs whose 
upper parts exceed the girth of an ox!” We speak of the elephant as the 
largest of terrestrial living animals, and only smaller than the mammoth of 
a former geological period ; but there are grounds for believing that in the 
American mastodon there existed a contemporary with man which exceeded 
both.* The discoveries in the new red sandstone in Connecticut indicate 
* In 1842 there was exhibited in this country the skeleton of a megatherium, named 
by the discoverer, Mr. Albert Koch, Missourium Theristo-caulodon. The leading ad¬ 
measurements of the bones were as follow: 
Ft. In. Ft.In. 
Length of the whole skeleton 30 
0 Total breadth of pelvis. 
.7 
2 
Height.. 
15 
0 
Length of the head. 
6 
0 
Width from one zygomatic arch to the other 
4 
0 
Longest rib.. 
5 
6 
Largest dorsal vertebra. 
2 
6 
Humerus.. 
3 
6 • 
(Greatest circumference. 
3 
(Smallest ditto . 
7 
Femur. 
4 
0 
Tibia. 
2 
4 
Upper fore-teeth (two), breadth 4 in., length 4 
6 
Tail, 13 vertebrae. 
2 
7 
Do. back teeth (two). „ 
7 
0 
Fore-foot webbed and clawed 
1 
3 
Head... 
1 
2 
The tusks, one of which was in its socket, measured 10 feet each, exclusive of the root, 
and were curved and borne horizontally, extending from point to point along the 
curvature 21 feet. The bones were solid and without marrow. Mr. Koch considers 
this creature to have been an inhabitant of large rivers and lakes. It was found in the 
state of Missouri, near the shores of one of the tributaries of the Osage river. The 
bones (exhumed in 1840) laid on a stratum of the upper green sand, and were covered 
to the depth of 14 or 16 feet with layers of alluvium, plastic clay, marl, and recent 
deposit from the river. But the most singular circumstance related by Mr. K., and 
which is the chief inducement for this notice, is the following:—“ The second trace of 
human existence in connection with these animals, I found during the excavation of 
the Missourium. There was imbedded immediately under the femur or hind-leg bone, 
an arrow-head of rose-coloured flint, resembling those used by the American Indians, but 
of larger size. This was the only arrow-head immediately with the skeleton; but in the 
same strata, at a distance of five or six feet, in a horizontal direction, four more arrow¬ 
heads were found; three of these were of the same formation as the preceding; the 
fourth was of very rude workmanship: one of the last mentioned three was of agate, 
the others of blue flint. These arrow-heads are indisputably the work of human hands. 
I examined the deposit in which they were embedded, and raised them out of their 
position with my own hands.” 
As Mr. Koch’s conclusions as to the contemporaneity of the human race with the 
living animals which we now only know in their fossil remains, are extremely 
