from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. Any of various extinct herbivorous hoofed mammals of the genus Brontotherium and related genera, of the Eocene and Oligocene epochs, resembling the rhinoceros.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. A member of the Titanotheriidae, a family of extinct mammals related to horses and rhinoceroses.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Any individual of the genus Titanotherium or member of the family Titanotheriidæ or superfamily Titanotheroidæ.
Osborn thinks it probable that the huge beast called titanothere finally became extinct early in Tertiary times owing to the form of its teeth, which were of such a type that they could not change to meet a change in the flora upon which the creature fed.
"In the great quadruped known as titanothere," says Osborn, "rudiments of horns first arise independently at certain definite parts of the skull; they arise at first alike in both sexes, or asexually; then they become sexual, or chiefly characteristic of males; then they rapidly evolve in the males while being arrested in development in the females; finally, they become in some of the animals dominant characteristics to which all others bend."
The next summer, at Rattlesnake Buttes, Horrible Horace uncovered a striking set of titanothere bones, accompanied by complete skeletons of camels, mammoths and dire wolves.
The thorax, like the head of a titanothere, bears three pairs of horns -- a great irregular expanse of tumbled, rock-like skin and thorn, a foundation for three pairs of long legs, and sheltering somewhere in its heart a thread of ant-life; finally, two little pedicels lead to a rounded abdomen, smaller than the head.
The huge titanothere, and the small three-toed horse, both existed at what may roughly be called the same period of the world's history, back in the middle of the mammalian age.
The titanothere is traceable back to a hornless animal the size of a sheep, and it ended in a horned quadruped nearly as large as an elephant.
Hammerhead titanothere - alien, but not alien enough?
Pandora is home to at least one mega-herbivore, the spectacular, elephant-sized Hammerhead titanothere [image above from here].
So did the titanothere, an ancient rhinoceros; the doglike hesperocyon, and archaeotherium, a large, piglike animal.