II. On the osteology of the genus glyptodon

Abstract

Part I.— The history of the discovery and determination of the remains of the Hoplophoridæ, or animals allied to, or identical with, Glyptodon clavipes . The earliest notice of the discovery of the remains of Glyptodon -like animals is contained in the following extract from a letter, addressed to M. Auguste St. Hilaire by Don Damasio Laranga, Curé of Monte Video, which appears in a note at p. 191 of the fifth volume of the first edition of Cuvier’s ‘Ossemens Fossiles,’ published in 1823:— “I do not write to you about my Dasypus ( Megatherium , Cuv.), because I propose to make it the subject of a memoir which, I trust, may not be unworthy of the attention of those European savants who take an interest in fossils. I will merely say that I have obtained a femur, which was found in the Rio del Sauce, a branch of the Saulis Grande. It weighs about seven pounds, and may be six or eight inches wide. In all points it resembles the femur of an Armadillo. I will send you one of its scales. The tail, as you have seen, is very short and very large; it also possesses scutes, but they are not arranged in rings, or in whorls. These fossils are met with, almost at the surface, in alluvial, or diluvial, formations of a very recent date. It would seem that similar remains exist in analogous strata near Lake Merrim, on the frontier of the Portuguese colonies.”