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Updated: June 24, 2025
But it by no means follows, because the Palaeotherium has much in common with the horse, on the one hand, and with the rhinoceros on the other, that it is the intermediate form through which rhinoceroses have passed to become horses, or vice versa; on the contrary, any such supposition would certainly be erroneous.
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.
They overlie the uppermost of an extensive series of Eocene deposits of marine, brackish, and fresh-water formations, which rest on the Chalk and terminate upward in strata corresponding in age to the Paris gypsum, and containing the same extinct genera of quadrupeds, Palaeotherium, Anoplotherium, and others which Cuvier first described. Corbula pisum. Cyrena semistriata. Cerithium elegans.
The principal metacarpal and metatarsal bones are flatter than they are in any of the Equidae; and the metacarpal bones are longer than the metatarsals, as in the Palaeotheria. In its general form, Plagiolophus resembles a very small and slender horse , and is totally unlike the reluctant, pig-like creature depicted in Cuvier's restoration of his Palaeotherium minus in the "Os semens Fossils."
I refer to Cuvier's investigation of the mammalian fossils yielded by the quarries in the older tertiary rocks of Montmartre, among the chief results of which was the bringing to light of two genera of extinct hoofed quadrupeds, the Anoplotherium and the Palaeotherium.
The upper division of this group consists in great part of beds of compact, fragile limestone, with some intercalated green marls. The shells in some parts are a mixture of Cerithium, Cyclostoma, and Corbula; in others Limnea, Cerithium, Paludina, etc. In the latter, the bones of reptiles and mammalia, Palaeotherium and Lophiodon, have been found.
In the territory of Nebraska, on the Upper Missouri, near the Platte River, latitude 42 degrees N., a tertiary formation occurs, consisting of white limestone, marls, and siliceous clay, described by Dr. Among these, Dr. Leidy describes a gigantic quadruped, called by him Titanotherium, nearly allied to the Palaeotherium, but larger than any of the species found in the Paris gypsum.
The remains of the extinct mammiferous animals, from the two gravel beds have been described by Professor Owen in the "Zoology of the Voyage of the 'Beagle':" they consist of, 1st, one nearly perfect head and three fragments of heads of the Megatherium Cuvierii; 2nd, a lower jaw of Megalonyx Jeffersonii; 3rd, lower jaw of Mylodon Darwinii; 4th, fragments of a head of some gigantic Edental quadruped; 5th, an almost entire skeleton of the great Scelidotherium leptocephalum, with most of the bones, including the head, vertebrae, ribs, some of the extremities to the claw- bone, and even, as remarked by Professor Owen, the knee-cap, all nearly in their proper relative positions; 6th, fragments of the jaw and a separate tooth of a Toxodon, belonging either to T. Platensis, or to a second species lately discovered near Buenos Ayres; 7th, a tooth of Equus curvidens; 8th, tooth of a Pachyderm, closely allied to Palaeotherium, of which parts of the head have been lately sent from Buenos Ayres to the British Museum; in all probability this pachyderm is identical with the Macrauchenia Patagonica from Port S. Julian, hereafter to be referred to.
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