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Toxodon

Toxodon \Tox"o*don\, n. [Gr. to`xon a bow + ?, ?, a tooth.] (Paleon.) A gigantic extinct herbivorous mammal from South America, having teeth bent like a bow. It is the type of the order Toxodonta.

Wiktionary
toxodon

n. (context paleontology English) A gigantic extinct herbivorous mammal from South America, having teeth bent like a bow. It is the type of the order Toxodonta.

Wikipedia
Toxodon

Toxodon (meaning "bow tooth") is an extinct mammal of the late Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs from about 2.6 million to 16,500 years ago. It is a member of Notoungulata, one of several now extinct orders of hoofed mammals indigenous to South America. It was among the largest and last members of its order, and was probably the most common large-hoofed South American mammal of its time.

Charles Darwin was one of the first to collect Toxodon fossils, after paying 18 pence for a T. platensis skull from a farmer in Uruguay. In The Voyage of the Beagle Darwin wrote "November 26th - I set out on my return in a direct line for Monte Video. Having heard of some giant's bones at a neighbouring farm-house on the Sarandis, a small stream entering the Rio Negro, I rode there accompanied by my host, and purchased for the value of eighteen pence the head of the Toxodon." Since Darwin discovered that the fossils of similar mammals of South America were different from those in Europe, he invoked many debates about the evolution and natural selection of animals.

Analysis of collagen sequences obtained from Toxodon as well as from Macrauchenia found that South America's native notoungulates and litopterns form a sister group to perissodactyls, making them true ungulates.

Usage examples of "toxodon".

We may doubt whether they have thus changed: if the Megatherium, Mylodon, Macrauchenia, and Toxodon had been brought to Europe from La Plata, without any information in regard to their geological position, no one would have suspected that they had coexisted with still living sea-shells.

When I found in La Plata [Argentina] the tooth of a horse embedded with the remains of Mastodon, Megatherium, Toxodon, and other extinct monsters, which all co-existed at a very late geological period, I was filled with astonishment.

When I found in La Plata the tooth of a horse embedded with the remains of Mastodon, Megatherium, Toxodon, and other extinct monsters, which all co-existed with still living shells at a very late geological period, I was filled with astonishment.