Dr. C. F. Winslow has communicated to the Boston Society of Natural History the discovery of the fragment of a human cranium 180 feet below the surface of the Table Mountain, California. Now the mastodon’s bones being found in the same deposits, points very clearly to the probability of the appearance of the human race on the western portions of North America at least before the extinction of those huge creatures. Fragments of mastodon and Elephas primigenius have been taken ten and twenty feet below the surface in the above locality; where this discovery of human and mastodon remains gives strength to the possible truth of an old Indian tradition,—the contemporary existence of the mammoth and aboriginals in this region of the globe.
HABITS OF THE MEGATHERIUM.
Much uncertainty has been felt about the habits of the Megatherium, or Great Beast. It has been asked whether it burrowed or climbed, or what it did; and difficulties have presented themselves on all sides of the question. Some have thought that it lived in trees as much larger than those which now exist as the Megatherium itself is larger than the common sloth.[35] This, however, is now known to be a mistake. It did not climb trees—it pulled them down; and in order to do this the hinder parts of its skeleton were made enormously strong, and its prehensile fore-legs formed so as to give it a tremendous power over any thing which it grasped. Dr. Buckland suggested that animals which got their living in this way had a very fair chance of having their heads broken. While Professor Owen was still pondering over this difficulty, the skull of a cognate animal, the Mylodon, came into his hands. Great was his delight when he found that the mylodon not only had his head broken, but broken in two different places, at two different times; and moreover so broken that the injury could only have been inflicted by some such agent as a fallen tree. The creature had recovered from the first blow, but had evidently died of the second. This tribe had, as it turns out, two skulls, an outer and an inner one—given them, as it would appear, expressly with a view to the very dangerous method in which they were intended to obtain their necessary food.
The dentition of the megatherium is curious. The elephant gets teeth as he wants them. Nature provided for the comfort of the megatherium in another way. It did not get new teeth, but the old ones went on for ever growing as long as the animal lived; so that as fast as one grinding surface became useless, another supplied its place.
THE DINOTHERIUM, OR TERRIBLE BEAST.
The family of herbivorous Cetaceans are connected with the Pachydermata of the land by one of the most wonderful of all the extinct creatures with which geologists have made us acquainted. This is the Dinotherium, or Terrible Beast. The remains of this animal were found in Miocene sands at Eppelsheim, about forty miles from Darmstadt. It must have been larger than the largest extinct or living elephant. The most remarkable peculiarity of its structure is the enormous tusks, curving downwards and terminating its lower jaw. It appears to have lived in the water, where the immense weight of these formidable appendages would not be so inconvenient as on land. What these tusks were used for is a mystery; but perhaps they acted as pickaxes in digging up trees and shrubs, or as harrows in raking the bottom of the water. Dr. Buckland used to suggest that they were perhaps employed as anchors, by means of which the monster might fasten itself to the bank of a stream and enjoy a comfortable nap. The extreme length of the Dinotherium was about eighteen feet. Professor Kemp, in his restoration of the animal, has given it a trunk like that of the elephant, but not so long, and the general form of the tapir.—Professor Owen.
THE GLYPTODON.
There are few creatures which we should less have expected to find represented in fossil history by a race of gigantic brethren than the armadillo. The creature is so small, not only in size but in all its works and ways, that we with difficulty associate it with the idea of magnitude. Yet Sir Woodbine Parish has discovered evidences of enormous animals of this family having once dwelt in South America. The huge loricated (plated over) creature whose relics were first sent has received the name of Glyptodon, from its sculptured teeth. Unlike the small armadillos, it was unable to roll itself up into a ball; though an enormous carnivore which lived in those days must have made it sometimes wish it had the power to do so. When attacked, it must have crouched down, and endeavoured to make its huge shell as good a defence as possible.—Professor Owen.
INMATES OF AN AUSTRALIAN CAVERN.
From the fossil-bone caverns in Wellington Valley, in 1830, were sent to Professor Owen several bones which belonged, as it turned out, to gigantic kangaroos, immensely larger than any existing species; to a kind of wombat, to formidable dasyures, and several other genera. It also appeared that the bones, which were those of herbivores, had evidently belonged to young animals, while those of the carnivores were full-sized; a fact which points to the relations between the two families having been any thing but agreeable to the herbivores.