62 AFFINITIES AND HABITS OF THYLACOLEO, 



nearly allied to Plagiaulax and considerably removed from 

 existing Diprotodonts. 



In 187 2 Kreift* communicated a second short paper to the Annals 

 & Magazine of Natural History, in which he agrees in the main 

 with Flower's position. In this paper he records his opinion 

 " that the animal under discussion is a mixed feeder allied to the 

 phalanger tribe."! But he appears to have been slightly in doubt 

 as to the habits, for he states that " with the true molars reduced 

 to a pair below, one of which is tubercular, and to a single 

 transverse tooth above, the somewhat carnivorous character of 

 the animal becomes manifest;"! while further on in the same paper 

 he speaks of Thylacoleo as a " certainly harmless creature,"§ and 

 in a paper published a year later, ]| he says, — " the view I took 

 first of the herbivorous lialjits of the ' lion in phalanger hide ' 

 ■was a perfectly correct one. "II 



Since then, beyond a short paper by Owen** in 1887, in which he 

 describes the posterior part of a perfect jaw, I am not aware of 

 any special papers having been published on the subject, but 

 numerous short notes have appeared by various scientists in 

 different publications, ff Flower's article on Mammalia in the 9th 



* "A Cuvierian Principle in Palaeontology tested by evidences of an 

 Extinct Leonine Marsupial ( Thylacoleo carni/f x),hy Professor Owen, F.R.S." 

 Reviewed by Gerard Krefit. Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1872, (4), x. p. 169. 



+ Lor. cif. p. 175. t Loc. at. p. 174. § Loc. cit. p. 181. 



II "Australian Natural History." Trans. Roy. Soc. N.S.W. 1873, p. 135. 



IT Loc. cit. p. 138. 



** " Additional Evidence of the Affinities of the Extinct Marsupial 

 Quadruped, Thylacoleo carnifex, Owen." Phil. Trans. 1887, B. 



ft [It seems desirable to mention that when this paper was written the 

 author was resident in Namaqualand, Cape Colony, quite out of reach of 

 libraries. Otherwise no doubt some special reference would have been made 

 to two papers by Mr. De Vis, of the Queensland Museum, in which the 

 carnivorous (ossipliagous) character of Thylacoleo is upheld ("On Tooth- 

 marked Bones of Extinct Marsupials," P.L.S.N.S.W. 1883, viii. p. 187; 

 and " On a Femur probably of Thylacoleo," Proc. Roy. Soc. Queensland, 

 1886, iii. p. 122). Two later papers by Prof. Owen (" On the Affinities of 

 Thylacoleo and on the " Pelvic Characters of Thylacoleo (•ar«//is'a,'," Phil. 

 Trans. Vol. 174, Part ii. 1880, pp. 575 and 639) have also been inadvertently 

 overlooked. — Ed.] 



