VI.— Description of a Tooth and Part of the Skeleton of the Glyptodon clavipes , a large Quadruped of the Edentate Order, to which belongs the Tesselated Bony Armour described and figured by Mr. Clift in the former Volume of the Transactions of the Geological Society; with a consideration of the question whether the Megatherium possessed an analogous Dermal Armour.

Abstract

Plates X. XI. XII. and XIII. The first notice of the discovery of the osseous remains of the skeleton of a large edentate Mammal associated with fragments of a tesselated bony armour, similar to that of the Armadillo, appears in the note appended to the end of Cuvier’s chapter on the Megatherium, in the 4to edition of the Ossemens Fossiles, published in 1823. This notice occurs in an extract from a Letter addressed by D. Damasio Larranaga, Cure of Monte Video, to M. Auguste St. Hilaire. The facts stated in this extract are the following :—A femur was discovered in the Rio del Sauce, branche du Saulis-Grande, which weighed seven pounds; it was short, but might be from six to eight inches in width; it resembled in every respect the femur of an Armadillo; with it was found a portion of tesselated bony armour, of which the Cure promises to send one of the component pieces (une de ces ecailles) to M. Auguste Geoffroi. The tail was very short and very stout (tres-grosse); it had, in like manner, a bony armour (des ecussons), but this was not verticillate, or disposed in rings. These fossils are stated to have been met with near the surface of the earth, in alluvium, or strata of transport, indicative of a very recent epoch; similar fossils are said to occur in analogous strata near the lake Mirim, on the frontier of the Portuguese colonies. The notion that the fossils here mentioned belonged to the