884 Marvels of the Universe 
DINOTHERIUM 
BY REV. H. N. HUTCHINSON, F.R.G.S., F.G.S., F.Z.S. 
THE great extinct creature of which a restoration is here given was a relation of the elephants. The 
reader may perhaps have already guessed that much from the large proboscis and elephantine limbs. 
It lived in the Miocene and Pliocene geological periods, and seems to have ranged over Europe, 
East Africa, and perhaps India, but is unknown in America. Its history, considered as a fossil, is 
an interesting one. First of all (as has often been the case), isolated teeth were found and described 
in 1715, 1775 and 1785. Kaup, in the year 1829, gave the name Dinotherium to a lower jaw; but 
not understanding it, put it upside down. Then in 1835 a more or less complete skull was found 
Photo by] LE, Step, F.L.S. 
THE SHORE-CRAB. 
It has here attained its full development. The Shore-crab must be distinguished from the Edible Crab, which reaches a 
much greater size, and for this reason its alternative folk-name of the Green Crab is perhaps more suitable. 
at Eppelsheim, Hesse-Darmstadt. This head, when exhibited in Paris, excited great interest among 
the naturalists in that city. M. de Blainville pointed out its most remarkable points, and concluded 
that it was related to the manatees and dugongs. Recent researches tend rather to confirm that 
view. Kaup placed it between the tapir and rhinoceros. But it was evidently a proboscidian— 
that is to say, elephant-like. The skull, lower jaws, teeth, and some limb-bones of this great and 
strange beast may be seen in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. The skull and 
lower jaws are in a separate glass case, and it is evident that the roof of the skull has been 
considerably crushed in. It is important to bear this in mind; otherwise one may get quite an 
erroneous idea of the shape of the head. But the most conspicuous feature of this specimen is the 
downward curve of the lower jaws—so different from those of any other big quadruped. The down- 
ward curve of the tusks reminds one of the walrus. That shrewd naturalist and geologist, Dean 
Buckland, concluded that it was almost mechanically impossible for such a jaw, nearly four feet long, 
to have been supported in air by its possessor ; he therefore concluded that it was destined to 
