Abstract
A MONG the extinct animals of the diluvial age, few have left such scanty remains as the elasmotherium. At the beginning of the present century Fischer von Weldheim, when examining the palseontological collections of the University of Moscow, came across the half of the under-jawbone of an unknown animal, to which he assigned a place between the rhinoceros and elephant. The name elasmotherium was given to the new species, on account of the peculiar appearance of the teeth, which seemed to consist of plates of enamel longitudinally folded. Later scattered teeth of this animal were found in Hungary, in Sicily, and in various Russian provinces. A few years since a complete tinder-jawbone was discovered at Petrowski; a fragment of the back part of a skull in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, which was discovered on the banks of the Rhine in the last century, has likewise lately been identified as belonging to the elasmotherium. These remains were altogether too limited, to offer the zoologist any satisfactory clue to the general character of this animal. While the form and size of the jaw showed a strong resemblance to that of the rhinoceros, a close relationship was forbidden by the peculiar characteristics of the teeth.
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THE ELASMOTHERIUM . Nature 18, 387–389 (1878). https://doi.org/10.1038/018387b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/018387b0