Tour the National Museum After the First Fifty Years

Cast from skeletons in the British Museum and the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. Presented by Prod Henry A. Ward, of Rochester, New York.

This gigantic fossil was first made known to the scientific world in 1789. It was discovered on the banks of the river Luxan, near the city of Buenos Ayres, and was subsequently transmitted to Madrid. The extreme length of this skeleton is seventeen feet and nine inches, its height from the pedestal to the top of the spinous process of the first dorsal vertebra, is seventeen fleet. The megatherium differs strikingly from existing quadrupeds of corresponding bulk, in the vast proportions of its anterior extremities. Its clavical, fifteen inches long is the largest known. The fore-leg bespeaks enormous strength; with the foot, it is seven feet and four inches in length. The posterior extremities are shorter than the anterior. The pelvis is the largest bone in any land animal, living or extinct; it is upwards of five feet broad. The hind legs appear more like columns for support than organs for locomotion, and, with the hind feet, are models of massive organic masonry. The heel bone alone has the extraordimtry length of seventeen inches, and a circumference of twenty eight inches. The monster walked like the ant-eater, on the outside edge of its foot, on a marginal hoof-like callosity. The middle toe of the hind foot, and likewise the second, thirds and fourth digits of the forefoot, were armed with powerful claws. The magnitude of the tail fills the observer with wonder, when clothed with flesh, it must have been more than six fleet around at the greater end. With the hind legs it formed a tripod, upon which the animal rested when obtaining its food. That the animal was not carnivorous, is settled by the structure of its molar teeth, it lacks incisors; therefore it was not a ruminant. The megatherium needed not agility for securing prey, for it was not carnivorous; not for flight, for its size alone must have been a protection against any living foe. It was doubtless a solitary animal. The gathering together in herds was not required for self defense; indeed, the necessities of the creature to obtain an enormous daily supply of food should not have allowed it, unless the vegetation of that day were far more dense than is the modern vegetation of the same region. When stripping the trees it had prostrated, its position was probably a reclining one, and Professor Agassiz has ventured the opinion that this crouching attitude was constant to the animal, anal that it crept along with the filll length of its fore-arm resting upon the ground.

Irish Elk (Megaceros hibernicus)

Obtained from an Irish peat-bog. The antlers measure nine feet from tip to tip. The restoration of this noble animal, by B. Waterhouse Hamkins, is one of the most imposing objects in the Museum.

Himmalayan Tortoise (Collossochelys atlas), Sewalik Hills, India.

This gigantic tortoise, the king of the Chelonians, was a contemporary of the Sivatherium. The original cast, belonging to the British Museum, is a restoration fiom fragments discovered in the Miocene strata of the Sewalik Hills, India, and now in the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Size, 8 fleet 2 inches in length by 5 feet 10 in width.

Hadrosaurus; Kangaroo Lizard (Hadrosaurus Foulkii). New Jersey

Restoration by B. Waterhouse Hawkins, from bones found in 1858, near Haddonfieid, N. J., in Museum of Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, Pa. The length of femur, (thigh bone,) is 40 inches; of the tibia, (shin bone,) 36+ inches; the entire length of the animal is 25 feet.

Perhaps the most extraordinary reptile yet discovered in the American cretaceous formations. The bones of the hinder extremity are especially remarkable for their huge proportions, whether viewed independently or in relation with those of the fore-extremity. The femur is forty-one inches and a half long and fifteen inches in circumference near the middle. The tibia is over three feet long and nearly a foot in circumference about the middle. The remains of Hadrosaurus exhibit a close relationship of the reptile with the Iguanodon, a lizard of equally huge proportions and like habits, discovered by Dr. Mantell in the next oldest formation to the cretaceous, known as the wealden of Europe. Hadrosaurus and Iguanodon, in proportions and habits, held the same relationship with other great extinct lizards that the bulky herbivorous pachyderms do among ordinary mammals. They might be viewed as the oxen among the tigers and insect eaters of lizards. Hadrosaurus was probably an amphibious reptile. Its huge, laterally flattened tail was evidently adapted to swimming. The large hollows in the interior of the arms and thigh bones would indicate a partially terrestrial habit. The great disproportion between the fore and back parts of the body has led to the view that when not swimming the huge reptile supported itself in a frog-like position, though it had an additional prop in the huge tail.

Glyptodon (Schisopleurum typus), Carapace, Head, Tail, and Leg.

This gigantic fossil Edendate was a representative in Pleistocene times of the Armadillos of South America. It was furnished with a huge carapace or coat of mail, formed of hexagonal plates united by sutures, and constituting an impenetrable covering for the upper part of the body and part of the tail. The carapace differs from that of modern Armadillos in having no greaves or joints, for the purpose of contracting or rolling up its body. The most remarkable characteristic of the skull is the long strong process descending from the base of the zygomatic process. The animal measured from snout to the end of the tail, following the curve of the back, eleven feet; the tesselated trunk-armor being six feet eight inches in length and nine feet across. The glyptodons do not appear to have emigrated from the central regions of South America, but formed a local fauna, which is now only faintly represented by the living Armadillos. The carapace of these Edentates probably weighed more than a thousand pounds. The original was found in l846, near Montevideo, on the banks of the Luxan, (Pleistocene.) It was presented by order of the Dictator Rosas to Vice-Admiral Dupotet, who gave it to the museum of his native city-Dijon, France, where it is still preserved.

For more information on earth science see,

Return to start of the Tour the National Museum in 1886