SHORT-FOOTED GROUP. 
559 
equally well have been purely terrestrial, and have used its tusks, after the manner 
of the African elephant, in turning up the soil in search of roots and tubers. 
A ith this animal, an illustration of whose skull is given below, our present 
knowledge of the Proboscidians and their ancestors comes to an abrupt termination. 
The Short-Footed Ungulates. 
Suborder Amblypoda. 
There are several extinct groups of Ungulates differing so markedly from the 
living forms that they cannot be included in any of the groups into which the 
latter are divided, and consequently 
have to be classed in groups by 
themselves. 
The name of Short - footed 
Ungulates is applied to one of these 
groups which is confined to the 
Eocene division of the Tertiary 
period, and is more developed in 
the United States than in Europe. 
It is represented in both con¬ 
tinents by the coryphodons of the 
lower and middle Eocene beds, and 
in America by the uintatheres of 
the upper Eocene. In these animals 
the feet, as shown in the figure on 
p. 152, were very short, and were 
each provided with five toes, the 
mode of walking being partly 
plantigrade. The molar teeth were 
of the type as shown in figure on 
the next page, having short crowns 
and the ridges arranged in a 
Y-shape in those of the upper jaw. The two bones in the fore-arm, as well as 
those in the lower leg, were quite distinct from one another. 
The coryphodons were animals which may be compared in size to a bear, and 
possessed the full typical number of forty-four teeth, with the tusks (canines) well 
developed. They had no horn-like processes to the skull. In the fore-feet (see 
p. 152) only the terminal bones of the toes touched the ground, but in the hind 
ones the whole sole was applied to the ground, in the same manner as in a bear. 
The American uintatheres, on the other hand, were much larger animals, 
rivalling the Indian rhinoceros in bulk. Their skulls were provided with three 
pairs of bony processes, which during life were probably covered with horn; and 
the upper tusks were developed into enormous sabre-like teeth, protected by a 
descending flange on each side of the front of the lower jaw. There were no 
incisor teeth in the upper jaw, and the first premolar tooth was wanting in both jaws, 
