to the Anteaters of the New World are chiefly adaptive and have nothing to do with real affinity, being merely an expression of a similar mode of life, it is curious to note that here and there we do find certain resemblances which do not seem to be susceptible of the latter explanation. The jugal bone, absent in Manis, is small in Myrmecophaga; the clavicle is absent and again small or rudimentary in the Anteaters; it is large in other Edentates. The third trochanter is absent, as in Myrmecophaga (and the Sloths). There are many scales on the body; in Myrmecophaga there are traces of these structures on the tail, as also in Tamandua. In the features mentioned, the Myrmecophagidae differ from either or from both of the two other American families (i.e. Dasypodidae, Bradypodidae) and agree with Manis. The facts are not a little remarkable.
Fig. 109.—Manis. Manis gigantea. × 1⁄12.
Order III. GANODONTA.[1]
Allied to the Edentata, and apparently representing the ancestral forms from which they, at any rate the Xenarthra were derived, is the order of the Ganodonta. Of this order a number of genera are now known, which can be ranged in a series which more and more approaches the Edentata as we pass from the older to the newer forms. This interesting and transitional series will be made manifest by a description of the characters of the various genera taken in their proper chrono-
- ↑ See Wortman, "The Ganodonta and their Relationship to the Edentata," Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. ix. 1897, p. 59.
