Samotherium 2015 study found that "Samotherium" had a neck intermediate in length between the giraffe and the okapi, judging from examination of specimens of "S. major" from Greece. Samotherium Samotherium ("beast of Samos") is an extinct genus of Giraffidae from the Miocene and Pliocene of Eurasia and Africa. "Samotherium" had two ossicones on its head, and long legs. The ossicones usually pointed upward, and were curved backwards, with males having larger, more curved ossicones, though, in the Chinese species, "S. sinense", the straight ossicones point laterally, not upwards. The genus is closely related to "Shansitherium". According to biologist Richard Ellis and
Tears of the Giraffe the brilliant evenhandedness with which McCall Smith plays the two cultures against each other, here is a conversation between Mma Potokwane and Mr JLB Matekoni that takes place in "Tears of the Giraffe", the second book of the series." She quotes the conversation in "Tears of the Giraffe" between Mr JLB Matekoni and Mma Potokwane, matron of the orphan farm, after she has been reading some of Freud's works, finding them not wholly useful. She says that "The passage is a tour de force of double-edged irony" and she considers some of the remarks in that dialogue worthy of Mark