Macrauchenia, the last South American ungulate

2015-02-22 22:16:45

Almost two hundred years ago, in March 1834, Charles Darwin, embarking on his famous voyage around the world on the Beagle, sent a letter to his teacher John Stevens Henslow from the Malvinas Islands. In it you can read: “In Puerto San Julián I have found very perfect bones of a large animal, I imagine a mastodon. The bones of a hindlimb are very perfect and solid. It is interesting, since the latitude is between 49 and 50 degrees, and the place is very far from the great pampas, where the bones of the narrow-toothed mastodon are so frequently found.” But this time, Darwin was wrong. The bones corresponded to a Macrauchenia.