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"These are plantigrade; and for this reason they have been classed along with the bears under the general name ursidae; but in father's opinion, and mine too," added Alexis, with a slight sparkle of scientific conceit, "this classification is altogether an erroneous one, and rests upon the very insignificant support of the plantigrade feet.
They were of an oblong shape, and larger than the footprints of a man; but the deep holes made by five great claws at the end of each told what animal had made them. They were the tracks of the grizzly bear. There could be no doubt of this, for there were the prints of the long plantigrade feet, the tubercules of the toes, and the holes where the curving claws had sunk several inches into the mud.
When overtaken, however, he turns upon the dogs; and, should one of the latter come near enough, a single blow of his paws will usually send it sprawling. He runs awkwardly on his plantigrade feet; but, although from his great length and size he appears to move but slowly, it is not so. He manages to shuffle over the ground much more rapidly than one would suppose.
I was with the Philadelphia Institute expedition in the Bad Lands under Professor Cope, hunting mastodon bones, and I overheard him say, his own self, that any plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hadn't wings and was uncertain was a reptile. Well, then, has this dog any wings? No. Is he a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium?
The hoofed mammals of the Tertiary included many offshoots from the main lines which we have traced. Among them were a number of genera of clumsy, ponderous brutes, some almost elephantine in their bulk. From these primitive flesh eaters, with small and simple brains, numerous small teeth, and plantigrade tread, the different families of the carnivores of the present have slowly evolved.
The well-known plantigrade tread of bears is a primitive characteristic which has survived from their creodont ancestry. CATS. The family of the cats, the most highly specialized of all the carnivores, divided in the Tertiary into two main branches.
It appeared rather to crawl than to walk but this arose from the fact of its being an animal of the plantigrade family; and using its feet to walk upon which in many other animals, such as the horse, appear to form part of the legs. With the animal in question the feet were long, black, and armed with white curving claws.
Was the enormous plantigrade hit by the bullet? Probably. Was he killed? They could not be sure, but his paws unclasped, and he rolled at the foot of the tree. Delay was dangerous. A struggle with so formidable an animal might have the worst results. In the forests of California the pursuit of the grizzly is fraught with the greatest danger, even to professional hunters of the beast.
And so we come to the final question: is the afternoon tea a place where one featherless, plantigrade, biped mammal of the genus Homo may meet another whom he might hope some time to call a friend? I do not mean 'my friend What's-his-name? but rather such another biped as Tennyson had in mind when he wrote,
His hind feet are plantigrade, that is, they rest upon the ground from heel to toe; and his back curves like the segment of a circle. He is fierce and extremely voracious quite as much so as the "glutton," of which he is the American representative.
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