The Pleistocene of North America: and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°Hay, Oliver Perry
Science
The Pleistocene of North America: and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°
Hay, Oliver Perry
Paleontology -- North America; Paleontology -- Pleistocene; Vertebrates, Fossil
Leidy (Trans. Wagner Free Inst., vol. II, p. 27) stated that a first
phalanx of _Megalonyx jeffersonii_ was among the fossils collected along
Peace Creek. It was probably found on the sand-bar at Arcadia. Among the
fossil vertebrates described by Leidy, the paper just cited included
some dermal plates which he referred to the genus _Glyptodon_. Two of
these plates were figured (op. cit., plate IV, fig. 9; plate VI, fig. 1)
as those of _G. petaliferus_, a species based on half of a dermal scute
described by Cope from southwestern Texas. The dermal scute shown on
Leidy’s plate IV appears to be indistinguishable from similar plates
which have been referred by the present writer to Cope’s _G.
petaliferus_ (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. LI, 1916, p. 107, plates III
to V). The scute represented by Leidy on his plate VI appears to be far
less extensively pitted than any of those of the specimen just referred
to. On Leidy’s plate V are two views of a scute which he thought might
have belonged on the tail of a glyptodon. It will be observed that this
scute has a beak distinctly set off from the body of the scute. Among
the few caudal scutes of the specimen which the writer described none
presents such a beak, but such may have existed. It seems probable,
however, that there was a single species of _Glyptodon_ found on Peace
Creek and that it was different from _G. petaliferus_. Leidy thought
that these caudal scutes resembled those on the tail of the South
American _G. asper_; but Burmeister’s figures do not indicate exactly
such keeled scutes. It is most probable that the Florida species
requires a new name. It is to be called _Glyptodon rivipacis_ Hay.
Leidy referred another dermal scute to some glyptodont animal (op. cit.,
plate VI, figs. 2, 3), but its nature is doubtful; it may even belong to
one of the large species of _Testudo_. A conical bone (plate III, figs.
10, 11) belonged pretty certainly to _Testudo_.
In the paper cited Leidy described and figured (p. 24, plate III, figs.
3 to 6) plates of an armadillo-like animal to which he gave the name
_Glyptodon septentrionalis_. It is now known as _Chlamytherium
septentrionale_. Leidy had over 30 of these dermal scutes which had been
found at Arcadia. They are now in the Wagner Free Institute at
Philadelphia.
Sellards (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XL, 1915, p. 143) states that there are
3 dermal plates of this animal in the U. S. National Museum. In 1915
(Florida Geol. Surv., vol. VII, pp. 77, 78, plate on p. 114) he
described a lower jaw, a tooth, and 2 dermal plates of the same animal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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