The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-12-24
The Tallest Extant Animal.
From knowledge.

Compared with their extinct allies of
earlier periods of the earth's history, it
may be laid down as general rule that
the large animals of the present day are
decidedly inferior in point of size, Dur
ing the latter portion of the territorial
period, for instance, before the incoming
of the glacial epoch, when mammals APP
pear to have attained their maximum de-
velopment, there lived elephants along
side of which ordinary individuals of the
existing species would have looked almost
dwarfs, while the cave bear and the cave
hyena attained considerably larger di-
mansions than their living representa-
tives, and some of the sable-toothed tigers
must have been considerably larger than
the biggest African lion or Bengal lion.
Again, the remains Of red deer, bison. and
wild oxen disinterred from the cav
ems and other surficial deposits of
this country indicate animals far superior
in size to their degenerate descend
ants of the present day, while some of
the extinct pigs from the Siwalik hills of
Northern India might be compared in
stature to a tapir rather than an ordi-
nary wild boar. The same story is told
of reptiles, the giant tortoise of the
Siwalik hills, in spite of the dimensions
having been considerably exaggerated
greatly exceeding in size the largest Iiv-
or the Galapagos Islands. The latter
have also yielded the remains of a long
shouted crockodile, allied to the gavial of
the Ganges, which probably measures
from fifty to sixty feet in length, whereas
it is very doubtful If any existing mem
Der of the order exceeds half the smaller
of these dimensions. If, moreover, we
took into account totally extinct types.
such as the megatheres and mylodons of
A fr.uc
with their nearest living allies-in this
instance the sloths and anteaters-the
discrepancy in size would be still more
marked, but such a comparison would
scarcely be analogous to the above.
To every rule there is, however, an ex-
ception, and there are few groups of liv-
ing large manuals whose existing mem
bers appear never to have been surpassed
in size by their fossil relatives. Fore
most among these are the whales, which
now appear to include the largest mem
bers Of the order which have ever ex-
listed. The so called white, or square
mouthed rhinoceros, of South Africa,
seems also to be fully equal in size to any
of its extinct ancestors; and the same is
certainly true of the giraffe, which may
even exceed all its predecessors in this
respect. Whether, however, the fos-
sill CRATES, Of which more anon,
were OF were HOb inc equalS IN
hight of the largest individuals of
the living species, there is no question but
that the latter is by sar the tallest of all
living mammals, and that 1t was only ri
vailed in this respect among extinct forms
by its aforesaid ancestors. Moreover, & if
we include creatures like some of the gi-
gantic dinosaurian reptiles Of the second
airy epoch, which, so TO speak. gained an
unfair advantage as regards height by
sitting on their hind legs in a kangaroo
like manner and limit our comparison to
such as walk on all four feet in the good
old Fashioned way, we shall find that gil