olG ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVEKY. 



also, was by this discovery known to have formerly lived in Australia, as 

 well as in Tasmania, to which it is now restricted. But, besides the fore- 

 going fossils, there was a single tooth, an incisor or tusk of ?ome quadruped 

 Avhich must have equalled a large ox or a rhinoceros in size. In this tooth 

 Professor Owen perceived such characters as led him to found upon it a new 

 genus, which he termed Diprotodon. 



In 1844 Professor Owen received some fossils from Dr. Hobson, of Mel- 

 bourne, which had been discovered in sinking a well at Mount Macedon, 

 near Port Philip. These fossils included a portion of the lower jaw, having 

 an incisive tusk in situ, identical in shape and structure with that on which 

 the genus Diprotodon had been founded, and also molar teeth, resembling in 

 form those of the kangaroo, but with generic modifications. This confirma- 

 tion of the former existence in Australia of a gigantic marsupial herbivorous 

 quadruped allied to the kangaroo was communicated to the British Associa- 

 tion at their meeting in 1844, and was noticed in the Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History for October, 1844. In the same paper Professor Owen 

 stated that he had received from Sir Thomas Mitchell some Australian 

 fossils, indicative of a second genus of large marsupial quadrupeds, which 

 he described under the name Nototherium. 



Although the molar teeth in both the Diprotodon and Nolotherhim presented 

 the same two-ridged type as in the kangaroo, they differed in wanting the 

 smaller connecting ridge; and Professor Owen was led to infer, from the 

 structure of the astragalus and calcaneum (two of the ankle bones), that the 

 hind limbs differed in a greater degree from those of the present kangaroos. 

 The above-named tarsal bones had been transmitted, with other fossil bones, 

 from Move ton Bay, by Sir Thomas Mitchell; they presented marsupial char- 

 acters, and by their size might have belonged to either the Diprotodon or 

 Nototlierium. In the kangaroos these ankle bones have peculiarities associ- 

 ated with the very long hind legs; but the large fossil ones resemble more 

 those of the wombat; whence Professor Owen inferred that the Diprotodon 

 must have had the hind limbs more nearly equal in length to the fore limbs. 

 Subsequent discoveries proved the truth of this inference. 



In 1847, a Mr. Turner brought from Darling Downs to Sydney, New South 

 Wales, a large collection of fossil bones, chiefly obtained from King's Creek, 

 a tributary of the Condamine River, Darling Do \vns. These downs are 

 extensive, slightly undulated plains covered with herbage, developed from a 

 rich, black soil containing concretions of carbonate of lime. Ranges of low 

 hills, with sudden slopes, and flat-topped cones formed of basaltic rock, rest- 

 ing on a felspathic or trachytic base, accompany the shallow valleys, and 

 bear an open forest, formed of various species of rather stunted Eucalyptus. 

 The plains are filled with an alluvium of great depth, wells of sixty feet 

 deep having been sunk in it. The plains in which the fossils have been found 

 are those distinguished by the creeks called Hodgson's, Campbell's, Isaac's, 

 King's, Oakey's, etc. These creeks traverse the plains on the west side of 

 the Condamine, into which they fall. The fossils are found in the beds of 

 the creeks, particularly in the mud of the dried-up waterholes, or among beds 

 of trachytic pebbles, which are overlaid by layers of clay and loam, with 

 marly concretions, above which is the rich, black surface soil. 



Fossil bivalve and univalve shells are found associated with, and sometimes 

 cemented to, the bones; but they are of the same species as those still exist- 

 ing in the present creeks and waterholes. 



The most extraordinary of the fossils brought from King's Creek by Mr. 



