On the osteology of the genus Glyptodon / by Thomas H. Huxley.

  • Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895.
Date:
[1865]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the osteology of the genus Glyptodon / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    on of the Arapey Grande, an affluent of the Uruguay) are formed. The skeleton of the Megatherium now at Madrid was found in a similar clay which underlies Buenos Ayres. The femur and the fragment of caudal armour were procured from the banks of the Quegnay, a more northern affluent of the Uruguay than the Arapey. Weiss remarks upon these fossils (l. c. p. 27G) “that it can hardly be doubted that they belonged to no other animal than the Megatherium, Cuv. Cuvier himself pub- lished, in a note to p. 191 of his ‘Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles,’ t. v. le partie, the first information which he received, in 1823, that his Megatherium was a loricated animal. M. Laranaga, parish priest of Monte Video* (from wdiom this information was derived, and in whose house M. Sellow, in 1822, saw two fragments of the armour, one belonging to the back and the other to the tail, which were found between Monte Video and Maldonado, in a gully opening into the Arroyo cle Solis), believed the animal to be an Armadillo, Dasgjms; Cuvier had already pointed out the similarity of the extremities to this genus and to Mijrmeeophaga. However, the armour plates found on the Arapey show no trace of a zonary arrangement, and the fragments possessed by M. Laranaga also leaving a doubt on this point, it may remain an open question whether the Megatherium possessed a veritably jointed armour, or whether it was not more probably provided with a solid shield.” The figures show, and Professor Weiss remarks upon, the raised conical form of the marginal pieces of the carapace. In the course of his description of the parts of the skeleton of a Megatherium sent to this country by Sir Woodbine Parish, Mr. Clift f remarks, “ In these latter instances the osseous remains were accompanied by an immense shell or case, portions of which were brought to this country; but most of the bones associated with the shell crumbled to pieces after exposure to the air, and the broken portions preserved have not been sufficiently made out to be, at present, satisfactorily described. Representations, how- ever, of parts of the shell in question are given in the plate annexed.” The plate (46) to which reference is here made exhibits views of the inner and outer surfaces of parts of the carapace of a Glyjptodon. In a note (p. 437) Mr. Clift mentions that casts of the principal bones in question have been sent, among other places, to the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. The next work upon this subject in the order of time, is the very valuable essay com- municated by Professor E. D’Alton to the Berlin Academy in 1833J. Sellow had * [“ A friend of natural history and, in every way, an estimable man, who has now unfortunately become blind,” writes H. Sellow regarding him to M. von Olfers on the 10th October 1829. We can therefore no longer look for the appearance of his promised essay on these fossil remains.] f “ Some account of the Remains of the Megatherium sent to England from Buenos Ayres by Woodbine Parish, jun., Esq., F.G.S., F.R.S.” By William Cliet, Esq., F.G.S., F.R.S. Read June 13,1832. Transactions of the Geological Society, vol. iii. 2nd series. + “ TJeber die von dem verstorbenen Herrn Sellow aus der Banda Oriental mitgebrachten fossilen Panzer- Fragmente und die dazu gehorigen Knochen-Ueberreste,” with four plates.- The volume of the ‘ Abhand- lungen der Koniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften,’ in which this essay appears, was published in 1835.