THE AGE OF GREAT MAMMALS. 
79 
cutting teeth that leaned backward. The waters also 
abounded in shell animals, crocodiles, and snakes, 
and many of them were like those of the species 
living to-day. 
The birdlike forms which we saw in the last age 
have given way to better specimens. Swallows, 
grouse, owls, woodpeckers, and eagles, but probably 
no song-birds, added variety to animal forms. In 
the Paris bed was found a bird as large as an ostrich 
which waded along the boggy shores. Another in 
the same place, perhaps, had thigh-bones as strong as 
those of the horse; a third, resembling the emu of 
Australia in size and general appearance, laid exceed¬ 
ingly large eggs. The fossil eggs measure thirteen 
inches in diameter and contain two gallons. A 
single egg would have furnished cold sliced egg for a 
whole picnic party. 
Fig. 47. —Extinct gigantic armadillo. 
Similar birds exist to-day in Australia, but they 
are rapidly becoming extinct. The dodo, which 
resembled a duck, but which really belonged to the 
