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Updated: June 18, 2025
By this means a stuffed Mylodon, a stuffed Beathach, stuffed five-horned antelopes and a stuffed Bunyip, with a common gorilla and the Toltec mummy, now forever silent, were passed through the New York Custom House, and consigned to the McCabe Museum of Natural Varieties.
Lyell, namely, that the "longevity of the species in the mammalia is upon the whole inferior to that of the testacea." The great size of the bones of the Megatheroid animals, including the Megatherium, Megalonyx, Scelidotherium, and Mylodon, is truly wonderful.
The subjoined wood-cut represents a Mylodon in the act of lifting himself against the trunk of a tree. They were clumsy brutes, and though their limbs were evidently built with reference to powerful movements, perhaps climbing, or at least rising on their hind quarters, the act of climbing with them cannot have had anything of the nimbleness or activity generally associated with it.
Here and there may be seen, projecting from the cliffs, huge skeletons of the toxodon, megatherium, mylodon, and other monsters which once in countless numbers inhabited the plains of South America. Now the river expands into lake-like proportions, its surface dotted with numerous low and wooded islands.
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.
"All around the carapace," says Ameghino, "in the reddish agglomerate of the original. soil lay charcoal cinders, burnt and split bones, and flints. Digging beneath this, a flint implement was found, with some long split llama and stag bones, which had evidently been handled by man, with some toxodon and mylodon teeth."
Formerly, but within the period when most of the now existing shells were living, North America possessed, besides hollow-horned ruminants, the elephant, mastodon, horse, and three genera of Edentata, namely, the Megatherium, Megalonyx, and Mylodon.
Very frequently the remains consist of almost perfect skeletons; but there are, also, numerous single bones, as for instance at St. Fe. Their state of preservation varies much, even when embedded near each other: I saw none others so perfectly preserved as the heads of the Toxodon and Mylodon from the white soft earthy bed on the Sarandis in Banda Oriental.
Seven leagues north of this city the same author found the skeletons of Mylodon robustus and Glyptodon ornatus.
I found here, also, some large portions of the armour of a gigantic armadillo-like animal, and part of the great head of a Mylodon. The bones of this head are so fresh, that they contain, according to the analysis by Mr. T. Reeks, seven per cent of animal matter; and when placed in a spirit-lamp, they burn with a small flame.
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