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None of them are referable to existing species. Among the last are crocodiles and tortoises of the genera Emys and Trionyx. Xiphodon gracile, or Anoplotherium gracile, Cuvier. The tribe of land quadrupeds most abundant in this formation is such as now inhabits alluvial plains and marshes, and the banks of rivers and lakes, a class most exposed to suffer by river inundations.
When I apply the former term, I merely mean to say that as a matter of fact, the form B, so named, is intermediate between the others, in the sense in which the Anoplotherium is intermediate between the Pigs and the Ruminants without either affirming, or denying, any direct genetic relation between the three forms involved.
Here, in fact, "cooking" makes all the difference, just as it does in the matter we were discussing above of the fitness of flesh and bone for trituration by man's teeth. The teeth are placed closely side by side without a gap an arrangement which does not occur in the apes nor in any other living mammal, although it is found in some extinct herbivores the Anoplotherium and the Arsinöitherium.
Farther on, the pachydermatous Lophrodon, that gigantic tapir, which concealed itself behind rocks, ready to do battle for its prey with the Anoplotherium, a singular animal partaking of the nature of the rhinoceros, the horse, the hippopotamus and the camel.
I said just now that, in the existing Fauna, the group of pig-like animals and the group of ruminants are entirely distinct; but one of the first of Cuvier's discoveries was an animal which he called the Anoplotherium, and which proved to be, in a great many important respects, intermediate in character between the pigs, on the one hand, and the ruminants on the other.
Thus the teeth of man constitute a regular and even series without any break and without any marked projection of one tooth above the level of the rest; a peculiarity which, as Cuvier long ago showed, is shared by no other mammal save one as different a creature from man as can well be imagined namely, the long extinct 'Anoplotherium'. The teeth of the Gorilla, on the contrary, exhibit a break, or interval, termed the 'diastema', in both jaws: in front of the eye-tooth, or between it and the outer incisor, in the upper jaw; behind the eyetooth, or between it and the front false molar, in the lower jaw.
The regularity and evenness of the dentition of the Anoplotherium, as contrasted with that of existing Artiodactyles, and the assumed nearer approach of the dentition of certain ancient Carnivores to the typical arrangement, have also been cited as exemplifications of a law of progressive development, but I know of no other cases based on positive evidence which are worthy of particular notice.
A considerable number are pachydermata, of a character approximating to the South American tapir: the names, palaeotherium, anthracotherium, anoplotherium, lophiodon, &c., have been applied to them with a consideration of more or less conspicuous peculiarities; but a description of the first may give some general idea of the whole.
Tracks of the Anoplotherium with its bisulcate hoof, and the trilobed footprints of Palaeotherium, were seen of different sizes, corresponding to those of several species of these genera which Cuvier had reconstructed, while in the same beds were foot-marks of carnivorous mammalia.
The regularity and evenness of the dentition of the Anoplotherium, as contrasted with that of existing Artiodactyles, and the assumed nearer approach of the dentition of certain ancient Carnivores to the typical arrangement, have also been cited as exemplifications of a law of progressive development, but I know of no other cases based on positive evidence which are worthy of particular notice.
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