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In Entre Rios, besides the remains of the Mastodon, Toxodon, Equus, and a great Dasypoid quadruped near St. I heard of bones near the source of the A. Vivoras. Lucia; and Signor Angelis, in a letter, states that a third skeleton of this family has been found, near Canelones. I saw a tooth of the Mastodon from Talas, another affluent of the St. Lucia.
It consists of red, tough clayey mud, with minute linear cavities; it is marked with faint horizontal shades of colour; it includes a few pebbles, and rarely a minute particle of shell: in one spot, the dermal armour and a few bones of a Dasypoid quadruped were embedded in it: it fills up furrows in the underlying gravel.
We must then wholly reject M. d'Orbigny's supposition, and admit as certain, that the Scelidotherium and the large Dasypoid quadruped, and as highly probable, that the Toxodon, Megatherium, etc., some of the bones of which are perfectly preserved, were embedded for the first time, and in a fresh condition, in the strata in which they were found entombed.
We have just seen that the armour of the Dasypoid quadruped was certainly embedded together with some of the bones of the feet.
Lastly, and 9thly, in a cliff of the red clayey bed B, there was a double piece, about three feet long and two wide, of the bony armour of a large Dasypoid quadruped, with the two sides pressed nearly close together: as the cliff is now rapidly washing away, this fossil probably was lately much more perfect; from between its doubled-up sides, I extracted the middle and ungual phalanges, united together, of one of the feet, and likewise a separate phalanx: hence one or more of the limbs must have been attached to the dermal case, when it was embedded.
At Punta Alta, however, we have seen that several of the extinct mammifers, most characteristic of the Pampean formation, co-existed with twenty species of Mollusca, a barnacle and two corals, all still living on this same coast; for when we remember that the shells have a more ancient appearance than the bones; that many of the bones, though embedded in a coarse conglomerate, are perfectly preserved; that almost all the parts of the skeleton of the Scelidotherium, even to the knee-cap, were lying in their proper relative positions; and that a large piece of the fragile dermal armour of a Dasypoid quadruped, connected with some of the bones of the foot, had been entombed in a condition allowing the two sides to be doubled together, it must assuredly be admitted that these mammiferous remains were embedded in a fresh state, and therefore that the living animals co-existed with the co-embedded shells.
I will lay no stress on the two cases of several ribs and bones of the extremities having APPARENTLY been embedded in their proper relative position: but will any one be so bold as to affirm that it is possible, that a piece of the thin tessellated armour of a Dasypoid quadruped, at least three feet long and two in width, and now so tender that I was unable with the utmost care to extract a fragment more than two or three inches square, could have been washed out of one bed, and re-embedded in another, together with some of the small bones of the feet, without having been dashed into atoms?
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