N., has found
numerous fossil bones, embedded in regular strata, on the banks of
the R. Gallegos, in latitude 51 degrees 4'. Some of the bones are
large; others are small, and appear to have belonged to an
armadillo. This is a most interesting and important discovery.) It
belongs to the same division of the Pachydermata with the
rhinoceros, tapir, and palaeotherium; but in the structure of the
bones of its long neck it shows a clear relation to the camel, or
rather to the guanaco and llama. 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. I was at first much surprised how a large quadruped could
so lately have subsisted, in latitude 49 degrees 15', on these
wretched gravel plains with their stunted vegetation; but the
relationship of the Macrauchenia to the Guanaco, now an inhabitant
of the most sterile parts, partly explains this difficulty.
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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