Читать книгу Peter Parley's Wonders of the Earth, Sea, and Sky онлайн

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Another animal was living at the same period, which I must describe to you, as it was, as far as we know, the largest quadruped that ever lived upon the earth, and in some respects the most remarkable. It was called the Dinotherium, or terrible wild beast, and you will soon know how well it deserved this name. The individual of which a part of the head is now in the British Museum, must have been eighteen feet long in the body, and proportionally large! If you compare this size with that of the largest elephant you have ever seen, you will be able to form some notion of his enormous magnitude.

In his general form he somewhat resembled the Tapirs, but by no means so nearly as did the Palæotherium. He had a much longer trunk; and his shoulder blade is formed like that of the mole, by which we know that he must have used his feet in digging. It seems almost certain that he was amphibious: and the back part of his skull has a remarkable similarity to that of the whale, and cetaceous fishes in general. But the most striking peculiarity in the bones which remain of this monster, is the existence of two large tusks bending down from the lower jaw, like two hooks, as you may see represented in this cut, of the head preserved in the Museum. His legs were probably rather short, and might have borne nearly the same proportion to his body, as those of the Hippopotamus do to his. From all we can collect, this must have been his general form and appearance.