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dinotherium
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- Any of various extinct elephantlike mammals of the genus Dinotherium that existed during the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene Epochs. Characteristic of the dinotherium were tusks that grew downward from its lower jaw.
Example Sentences
In the first restorations of Dinotherium it is represented lying amidst reeds, the feet concealed from view, the head alone visible, but now it is pictured as standing erect, for the discovery of massive leg-bones has definitely settled the question as to whether it did or did not have limbs.
Behind on a Showboard on the Wall Diagrams and Plates of Skeletons of Extinct Animals, Fish, and Flying Lizards, and a Dinotherium, and Mastodon, and Mammoth, and withal a human Skull, the People contemplate, and the Ladies and Damsels even, with Complacence, and to think all those pretty Creatures have Skeletons in themselves!
Dinotherium, dī-no-thē′ri-um, n. an extinct animal of huge size, with elephant-like tusks and trunk.
Although, therefore, Dr. J. E. Gray, following Cuvier, classed them with the cetacea in his British Museum catalogue, other anatomists, as Professor Agassiz, Professor Owen, and Dr. Murie, regard their resemblance to the whales as rather superficial than real, and conclude from their organisation and dentition that they ought either to form a group apart or be classed with the pachyderms—the hippopotamus, tapir, etc.—with which they have the nearest affinities, and to which they seem to have been more immediately linked by the now lost genera, Dinotherium and Halitherium.
Dinotherium may have inhabited rivers or estuaries.
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