GEOLOGY. 317 



Turner was an almost entire skull of the Diprotodon Australis. The length 

 was three feet; the two great anterior tusks, whence the name " Diproiodon," 

 projected a few inches beyond that length. Behind these tusks were two 

 smaller incisors in each premaxillary bone; but these six upper incisors 

 were opposed, as in the kangaroo, by a single pair of large incisors in the 

 lower jaw. 



The characters of this extraordinary cranium were described by Professor 

 Owen, and illustrated by drawings of the natural size. A descending process 

 of the zygomatic arch was pointed out as illustrating the affinities of the 

 Diprotodon with the Mycropus or the kangaroos. 



With this skull had been found a large bladebone two feet four inches 

 long, a humerus two feet two inches in length, a femur two feet five indies 

 in length, remarkable for the great extent of the neck; several vertebra, 

 fragments of ribs, and other bones, all agreeing in proportion with the skull, 

 and belonging to the same species, and most probably to the same indi- 

 vidual. 



This collection of bones, when brought to Sydney, was noticed by the 

 Rev. Mr. Clarke and by Mr. Macleay in letters in the Sydney Morning Herald, 

 and plaster casts were taken of the chief specimens. The whole collection 

 was purchased of Mr. Turner by a Mr. Boyd, who was about to return to 

 England. This gentleman is stated to have died on the voyage, and the ship 

 in which the fossils had been embarked was said to have been wrecked, and 

 its whole cargo was supposed to have been engulfed. A series of the casts of 

 the fossils taken at Sydney were transmitted by the authorities of the museum 

 there to the trustees of the British Museum. About the time when these 

 casts arrived, a sale of fossil remains took place at Stevens's auction-rooms; 

 these fossils were found to belong to large marsupial animals, were purchased 

 for the British Museum, and proved to be originals from which the casts in 

 the Sydney Museum had been taken. The auctioneer stated that they had 

 been the property of a Mr. Boyd. They will form the subject of a memoir 

 by Professor Owen. Besides the parts of the skeleton of the great Diprotodon, 

 they included a lower jaw of the same large extinct marsupial which the pro- 

 fessor had previously determined under the name of Nototherium MitchelU ; 

 and this jaw showed that there were two incisive tusks and ten molar teeth, 

 five on each side, in that genus. 



In January, 18-18, Professor Owen received from Mr. George Bennett, 

 F. R. S., of Sydney, sketches of a fossil cranium, which had been found in 

 the same formation and locality in Darling Downs as the Diprotodon. This 

 new skull was eighteen inches long and fifteen inches wide. It had three inci- 

 sors and five molars on each side, and, from its correspondence in size with the 

 lower jaw of the Nototherium, the Professor believed it to belong to that 

 genus. A cast of the cranium had been sent from Sydney to the British 

 Museum, and has seized to show that a fragment of upper jaw with molar 

 teeth, in Mr. Turner's collection, belonged to the same genus. These teeih 

 show precisely that structure which Professor Owen had previously pointed 

 out as distinguishing the teeth of the Nototherium from those of the Dipro- 

 todon. The lower jaw of the Not other him Mitclielli in Mr. Turner's series, 

 HOAV in the British Museum, belongs to the same species as the cranium now 

 in the museum at Sydney. This cranium is chiefly remarkable for the great 

 size and width of the zygomatic arches, which have also the descending 

 process as in the Diprotodon. The facial bones in advance of the orbit form 

 a kind of short pedunculate appendage to the rest of the skull, increasing in 



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