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Updated: June 20, 2025
AA. Superficial bed of reddish earth, with the remains of the Macrauchenia, and with recent sea-shells on the surface. B. Gravel of porphyritic rocks. C. and D. Pumiceous mudstone. Ancient tertiary formation. E. and F. Sandstone and argillaceous beds. This case, though not coming strictly under the Pampean formation, may be conveniently given here.
The Ungulata or hoofed quadrupeds are now divided into the even-toed or odd-toed divisions; but the Macrauchenia of South America connects to a certain extent these two grand divisions. No one will deny that the Hipparion is intermediate between the existing horse and certain other ungulate forms.
From recent sea-shells being found on two of the higher step-formed plains, which must have been modelled and upraised before the mud was deposited in which the Macrauchenia was intombed, it is certain that this curious quadruped lived long after the sea was inhabited by its present shells.
And many other characters are found to go with this obvious one. Even the very earliest Ungulata show this distinction, which is completely developed and marked even in the Eocene palæotherium and anoplotherium found in Paris by Cuvier. Now, the macrauchenia, from the first relics of it which were found, was thought to belong, as has been said, to the even-toed division.
What a history of geological changes does the simply-constructed coast of Patagonia reveal! At Port St. Julian, in some red mud capping the gravel on the 90-feet plain, I found half the skeleton of the Macrauchenia Patachonica, a remarkable quadruped, full as large as a camel.
It was he who made the extraordinary discovery in a Patagonian cave of the still fresh fragments of skin and other remains of the mylodon, the aberrant horse known as the onohipidium, the huge South American tiger, and the macrauchenia, all of them extinct animals.
From this neighbourhood he has lately sent to the British Museum the following fossils: Remains of three or four individuals of Megatherium; of three species of Glyptodon; of three individuals of the Mastodon Andium; of Macrauchenia; of a second species of Toxodon, different from T. Platensis; and lastly, of the Machairodus, a wonderful large carnivorous animal.
We may doubt whether they have thus changed: if the Megatherium, Mylodon, Macrauchenia, and Toxodon had been brought to Europe from La Plata, without any information in regard to their geological position, no one would have suspected that they had co-existed with sea-shells all still living; but as these anomalous monsters co-existed with the Mastodon and Horse, it might at least have been inferred that they had lived during one of the later tertiary stages.
The mammiferous animals characteristic of this formation, many of which differ as much from the present inhabitants of South America, as do the eocene mammals of Europe from the present ones of that quarter of the globe, certainly co-existed at B. Blanca with twenty species of mollusca, one balanus, and two corals, all now living in the adjoining sea: this is likewise the case in Patagonia with the Macrauchenia, which co-existed with eight shells, still the commonest kinds on that coast.
The relationship, though distant, between the Macrauchenia and the Guanaco, between the Toxodon and the Capybara, the closer relationship between the many extinct Edentata and the living sloths, ant-eaters, and armadillos, now so eminently characteristic of South American zoology, and the still closer relationship between the fossil and living species of Ctenomys and Hydrochaerus, are most interesting facts.
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