Essay on the Theory of the Earth

by baron Georges Cuvier

Palæotheria have also been found in other districts of France: at Puy in Valey, in strata of gypseous marl, a species (P. velaunum)[269], much resembling (P. medium), but differing from it in the form of its lower jaw; in the neighbourhood of Orleans, in strata of marly rock, a species (P. aurelianense)[270], which is distinguished from the others by having the re-entering angle of the crescent of its lower grinders split into a double point, and by some differences in the necks of the upper grinders; near Issel, in a bed of gravel or molasse, along the declivities of the Black Mountain, a species (P. isselanum)[271], which has the same characters as the Orleans species, but is of smaller size. It is more particularly, however, in the molasse of the Department of the Dordogne, that the palæotherium occurs not less abundantly than in our gypsum deposits in the neighbourhood of Paris.

The Duke Decaze has discovered in the quarries of a single field, bones of three species which appear different from all those of our neighbourhood[272].

The Lophiodons approach still somewhat nearer to the tapirs than the palæotheria do, inasmuch as their lower false grinders have transverse necks like those of the tapirs.

They differ, however, from these latter, in having the fore ones more simple, the backmost of all with three necks, and the upper ones rhomboidal, and marked with ridges very much resembling those of the rhinoceros.

We are still ignorant what the form of their snout, and the number of their toes, may have been. I have discovered not less than twelve species of this genus, all in France, deposited in marly rocks of fresh-water formation, and filled with lymneæ and planorbes, which are shells peculiar to pools and marshes.

The largest species is found near Orleans, in the same quarry as the palæotheria; it approaches the rhinoceros.

There is a smaller species in the same place; a third occurs at Montpellier; a fourth near Laon; two near Buchsweiler in Alsace; five near Argenton in Berry; and one of the three occurs again near Issel, where there are also two others. There is also a large one near Gannat[273].

These species differ from each other in size, the smallest being scarcely so large as a lamb of three months, and in various circumstances connected with the form of their teeth, which it would be too tedious and minute to detail here.

The Anoplotheria have hitherto been discovered nowhere but in the gypsum quarries of the neighbourhood of Paris. They have two characters which are observed in no other animal; feet with two toes, the metacarpal and metatarsal bones of which are separate in their whole length, and do not unite into a single piece, as in the ruminantia; and teeth placed in a continuous series without any interruption. Man alone has the teeth so placed in mutual contiguity, without any interval. Those of the anaplotheria consist of six incisors in each jaw, a canine tooth and six grinders on each side, both above and below; their canine teeth are short and similar to the outer incisors. The three first grinders are compressed; the four others are, in the upper jaw, square, with transverse ridges, and a small cone between them; and, in the lower jaw, in the form of a double crescent, but without neck at the base. The last has three crescents. Their head is of an oblong form, and does not indicate that the muzzle has terminated either in a proboscis or a snout.