It remains to consider, of what use this cuirass could have
been to the gigantic animal on which it probably was placed.
As the locomotive organs of the Megatherium indicate very
slow power of progression, the weight of a cuirass would
have afforded little impediment to such tardy movements;
its use was probably defensive, not only against the tusks
and claws of beasts of prey, but also, against the myriads
of insects, that usually swarm in such climates as those
wherein its bones are found; and to which an animal that
obtained its food by digging beneath a broiling sun, would
be in a peculiar degree exposed. We may also conjecture
it to have had a further use in the protection afforded by it
to the back, and upper parts of the body; not only against
the sun and rain, but against the accumulations of sand and
dust, that might otherwise have produced irritation and
diseased.[1]
above Buenos Ayres, by Mr. Parish. Although no armour was found with the fragments of the large skeleton, in the bed of the Salado, the rough broad flattened surface of a part of the crest of the ileum of this skeleton, (see Pl. 5, Fig. 2. r, s,) and the broad condition of the summit of the spinous processes of many vertebræ, and also of the superior convex portion of certain ribs on which the armour would rest, afford evidence of pressure, similar to that we find on the analogous parts of the skeleton of the Armadillo, from, which we might have inferred that the Megatherium also was covered with heavy armour, even had no such armour been discovered near bones of this animal in other parts of the same level district of Paraguay. In all these flattened bones the effects of pressure are confined to those parts of the skeleton, on which the armour would rest, and are such as occur in a remarkable degree in the Armadillo.
- ↑ To animals that dig only occasionally, like Badgers, Foxes, and Rabbits, to form a habitation beneath the ground, but seek their food upon the surface, a defence of this kind would not only have been unnecessary but inconvenient.
The Armadillo and Chlamyphorus are the only known animals that have a coat of armour composed of thick plates of bone, like that of the Megatherium, As this peculiar covering is confined to these quadrupeds, we can hardly imagine its use to be solely for protection against other beasts and insects; but as the Armadillo obtains its food by digging in
