[…] it was but shortly after he had returned from fever-ridden Santiago, when in the hospital at Montauk Point, that the much-coveted document, making him an officer in the United States Army, reached him.

[T]he Oligocene's signature species were an unsavoury group of pigs and pig-like creatures, foremost among which were the entelodonts, more popularly known as hell pigs, or terminator pigs.

sit around, mess around, loaf around

Soils are duplex, sandy and solodic. The dominant trees are the stringybark eucalypts […]