The cave in the dry valley north of the Atalaye plantation had been fully worked out for guanos since it was explored by Mr. Brown and Mr. Burbank. Since the writing of this article, the caves of St. Michel have been revisited in the interest of the National Museum. Insect species of the ;^eiuis Ah\s'or^h()ntes are already)iin(exuberantly represented in the Haitian caves.
Hence the teeth in the smaller Cuban jaws, which approach in size the maximum of the smaller Haitian form, are evidently larger than in the latter.
CHIROPTERA
In the type and a mandible the teeth have just begun to wear; in the second skull and second jaw the process is significantly more advanced.
NO. 9 MAMMALS FROM CAVES IN HAITI MILLER 9
Collected in the Crooked Cave near the Atalaye Plantation, about four miles east of St. Michel, Haiti, March, 1925, by Gerrit S. Miller, Jr. One mandible from each of these little bats was found in the great cave near St.
RODENTIA
Two incomplete skulls and 52 mandibles.. all pits have been worked with the exception of a deep pit near the Atalaya plantation. In Brotoinys the upper surface of the ridge slopes obliquely downwards and the edge is not upward. The most notable among them is the narrowness of the bony palate compared to the very wide alveoli of the front cheekbones.
The greater transverse convexity of the interorbital roof is a feature that cannot be expressed by measurements. The incomplete condition of the skull makes it difficult to compare the length of the rostrum with anything other than the length of the sky; hence the apparent shortening of the rostrum. In Brofomys (?) confracfus, the length of the palate (9.4), measured from the posterior border to the level of the anterior margin of the alveolus pm'^, is essentially equal to the distance from].
The narrowing of the palate to less than half the width of this alveolus in B. Its flesh seems to have been the principal food of the giant barn owl, Tyto ostolagas: many of the skulls and jaws were found in masses of bone which had the structure , which is characteristic of owl pellets. For now, it seems necessary to retain Isolobodon levir as the designation for the Haitian member.
NO. 9 MAMMALS FROM CAVES IN HAITI MILLER 1
In three mandibles from the same location, the tooth red and measures 18.6 in contrast to the maximum of 17.2 for the entire series of more than 600 jaws from the Haitian caves. Of two mandibles collected by Gabb at San Lorenzo Bay, one has a tooth diameter of 18.8 mm. in length, while in the other, a cute younger individual, . it is 16.8, just a little below the maximum for the Haitian samples. In both groups of caves the remains of this animal were common, . the frequency of their occurrence coming next to that of Isolobodon. deliver.
The material at hand makes it possible to define the genus more fully than I was able to do in the original article. It is clear that the genera Aphcctrcus, Isolobodon, and Plagiodontia form a rather compact group, the members of which are more closely related to each other than to any one of them. Capromys and his allies. In the Isolobodon group, the direction of the inner entrance fold is obliquely forward in the upper teeth, backward in the lower teeth; the reverse is the case in Capromys. The general structiu'e of the crowns in the Capromys grou]) correspond to those developed by the voles; this is not true regarding Isolobodon and its allies.
The curve of the upper incisor is short, the root of the tooth extends to the front edge of the zygomatic process of the maxilla; lower incisor ending below nn; pm* with an external reentrant angle, its enamel pattern exactly similar to that of the molars; reentrant folds in upper teeth very oblique, their inclination 45° or less as referred to the corresponding alveolar line; reentrant fold on inner side of lower teeth extending less than half way through crown; frontal sinus sufficiently swollen to produce a conspicuous swelling above the anterior zygomatic root, to touch the area of the antorbital foramen and to a lesser degree that of the orbit; posterior end of zygomatic process extending into maxilla.
NO. 9 MAMMALS FROM CAVES IN HAITI MILLER 17
Two toothless mandibles, not likely belonging to an individual, excavated from the small available area of original floor material in the cave room near St. Michel, are unique, among the theoctodon rodents I have examined, in the presence of a well-developed. Seven mandibles (five from the group of caves near St. Michel, the others from Crooked Cave near I'Atalaye) refer to the species represented by the large specimen from San Pedrode Macoris, Dominican Republic, which I have identified (Proc.. 6, September 30, 1927) as an individual of the species originally described by F. Cuvier.
Only one of the Haitian specimens is fully grown, and in this the coronoid and angular regions are broken and all teeth are lost. In two of the younger Haitian individuals, both of which were severed immediately after the stem, the second molar is not yet fully in place. In the five Haitian specimens with teeth, the enamel pattern presents the characters that distinguish Plagiodontia cedium from P.
Characters.— Similar to Plagiodontia liyhcitui Miller from the eastern Dominican Republic, but considerably smaller; length of mandible measured from articular process probably not more than 40 mL. I am able to obtain the following measurements: the length of the mandible from the length of the articular process of the symphysis,. At first sight the jaws of Plagiodontia spelceum can be mistaken for immature specimens of F.
20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 51
Capromyspiloridcs, so that the bony palate is reduced anteriorly to only about one-fifth the width of the adjacent alveolus or its. The anterior part of the crest, extending forward along the outer side of the mandible from the angular process, is heavier and more uniformly rounded than in the Cuban animal. The lower jaw and two isolated teeth were found in caves near I'Atalaya, the rest of the material came from large and small caves near St.
The enamel pattern is pentamerous with the inner reentrant fold of the upper teeth (at least in Amblyrhisa and Elasmodontoinys) and the outer fold of the lower teeth passing behind the posterior external reentrant. All of the returned folds penetrate almost or completely into the entire opposite side of the crown, thus producing a grinding surface which consists of a series of essentially parallel transverse enamel ridges. The roots of the third and fourth cheek teeth extend downward into this thickened area in Elasmodontomys.
Compared with that of the Porto Rican animal, the pattern in Queuiis'ia shows a mixture of excessive peculiarity and less high specialization. The forward turn of the enamel folds so that the anterior portion of each fold is approximately parallel to the main axis of the dentin. Thus, in each of the molars there is one incomplete enamel plate, the second, while in the premolars there are two, the first and second.
XENARTHRA
9 MAMMALS FROM CAVES IN HAITI MILLER 25 .. Specimens cxauiiued.—]\Iandil)]e and piece of an incisor from the crooked cave near the Atalaye plantation; hroken femur from the small cave of the same group. There was no evidence of previous digging that I could discover; and the bone and pottery appeared each time to have been deposited on the former surface of the cave floor and afterwards- (which had recently been covered by the gradual accumulation of debris, (d) Both these caves are situated on the side of a high reef where the material composing their floors has been completely removed from the action of currents, (e) In general, the ground sloth bones were associated with the human remains in exactly the same way as the bones of Isolohodon and Plagiodontia, rodents positively known is to have been contemporary with man. Characters.— Small ground-slothagreeing nemalized with the Porto Rican Acratocnus odonfrigonus Anthon}; its weight is not likely to exceed 50 pounds.
Femur similar to the Porto Rican sloth, and like it with a well-developed lesser trochanter and without appreciable antero-posterior compression of the shaft, but modified to be more directly perpendicular weight-bearing. The femur differs from the corresponding bone of Acratucnus odontrigoniis in at least two features which are important enough to indicate specific or possibly generic distinctness, (i) The. intertrochanteric ridge is similar in position and development to the corresponding structure in A. odontrigoniis, but it is supplemented by a large and conspicuous tubercle located in the middle of the shaft at a level slightly below the lesser trochanter. This tubercle, of which no obvious trace is found in the numerous Puerto Rican femurs with which I have compared the Haitian specimen, forms the culmination of a general thickening of the bone, which imparts to the upper quarter of the shaft, seen from the side, a strongly angular-convex profile . different from the flat or slightly concave profile of the same region in A. 2) The neck is shorter than in Acratocnus odontrigonus and is less bent outward and forward from the axis of the upper half of the shaft; as a result, the head is set so that it deviates less noticeably from the general contour of the shaft.
The differences in this respect between the Puerto Rican and Haitian animals are of the same kind.
NO. 9 MAMMALS FROM CAVES IN HAITI MILLER 2'J
Characters.— Femur differing from that of Acrafocints in the absence of the lesser trochanter; in the visible expansion and. Below the middle of the shaft, the diameters in the two femurs are essentially the same, with ratios of 58 and 59, a difference which is too small to be of any particular significance. Apart from this striking feature of general form, the femur of Parocnus serus is further distinguished from the known one.
Unfortunately, no perfect ground sloth skulls have yet been found in Haitian caves. It is about the size of the corresponding part of the skull in a large Acratocnus odontrigonus, but is markedly different in shape, due to the lack of the deep postorbital constriction, which is a prominent feature in the skull of Acratocnus. It shows a palate twice as broad in proportion to the length of the indentation as that of Acratocnus odontrigonus, and further differs from the palate of the Puerto Rican sloth in the presence of a complete median longitudinal ridge on each. laterally, with a shallow but well-defined longitudinal groove. in this individual it is probably about the same length as that of the Puerto Rican specimen figured by Anthony in plate 69.
