M. Cuvier was not I believe aware of the grounds which now exist for supposing that the animal was covered with a coat of mail, like the armadillo, which has led other comparative anatomists to ally it to that family. There were no remains of such a shell appertaining to the specimen at Madrid, neither were any found with the bones which I have spoken of as discovered in the Salado. Portions, however, of a shelly covering in a fossil state, which must have belonged to some gigantic animal, had been at various times dug up in the pampas, which had excited the attention and speculations of the curious. Even father Falkner in his account of the country speaks of them:--he says, that he himself found the shell of an animal composed of little hexagonal bones, each bone an inch in diameter at least, and the whole shell nearly three yards over: it seemed to him to be in all respects, except its size, the upper part of the shell of an armadillo.
The researches I set on foot after finding the skeleton in the Salado led to fresh discoveries, which, if they do not identify these shells with the megatherium, must lead us to conclude that these regions were once inhabited by other gigantic animals no less extraordinary. When the country-people saw the eagerness with which the big bones from the Salado were sought for, they were not backward in speaking of other places where similar remains had been met with, and were still, as they believed, to be found. Upon this information I once more despatched my agent to the south of the Salado, and the governor, Don Manuel Rosas, taking an interest in the matter, was good enough to furnish him with a letter of recommendation to the local authorities, desiring them to give him not only protection, but every assistance he might need to ensure his success. In little less than three weeks we were repaid by the discovery of two more enormous skeletons on the estancias of the governor himself, called Villanueva and Las Averias, and in both instances with the novelty of their being encased in a thick coating or shell resembling that of the armadillo. The first, found at Villanueva, though still of gigantic proportions, appears to have been very much smaller than that which had been taken out of the Salado: it was discovered in the bed of a small rivulet, and upon exposure to the air nearly all crumbled to dust. The only portions it was possible to preserve being part of a scapula, a small portion of the jaw with one small but perfect tooth remaining in it, and a fragment of a hind leg, with some of the feet bones. The shell lay, as Mr. Oakley, my agent, described it, a little below the principal mass of the bones, looking like the section of a huge cask; the form of it when first discovered appeared natural and perfect, but it would not bear to be lifted out of its bed, and broke into small pieces and crumbled away immediately.