a fossil comes 



to life 



by William D. Turnbull, Associate Curator. Fossil Mammals 



The mammal Burramys was known only from fossil remains until 

 1966, when Dr. K. Shortman of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute 

 of Medical Research, Melbourne, discovered and collected a liv- 

 ing specimen. Identification was made by Mr. R. M. Warneke, 

 Senior Research Officer of Fisheries and Wildlife De- 

 partment, Victoria. The photos of the living animal 

 are by Mr. James Cooper of the same agency. 



In august 1966, in the hut of a ski lodge 

 at Mt. Hotham, Victoria, Australia, a 

 most unusual and unexpected zoological 

 discovery was made. The appealing 

 little animal shown here, a small pha- 

 langerine possum, was seen and cap- 

 tured. When put into the hands of sci- 

 entists of the Victorian Fisheries and 

 Wildlife Department, the animal was 

 recognized to be the first living repre- 

 sentative of the genus Burramys, which 

 heretofore had been known only from 

 fossil remains. It is indeed remarkable 

 that an animal as distinctive in its den- 

 tition as Burramys has survived so long 

 without zoologists being aware of its 

 presence. However, its small size, wary 

 nature and outward similarity to other 

 related small possums can account for 

 this oversight. Nevertheless, in this day 

 of world-wide, extensive alteration of 

 natural environments by man, it is truly 

 astonishing to discover a living repre- 

 sentative of a mammalian genus previ- 

 ously thought to be extinct. 



Burramys is a familiar name in the Ge- 

 ology Department, since fossils of this ge- 

 nus have been studied for many years. In 

 1895, the paleontologist Robert Broom 

 (who subsequently became well known 

 for his work on South African Permian 

 fossils from the Karoo) gave the name 



Paged JANUARY 



Burramys parvus to a few cave fossils from 

 a travertine deposit from the Wombeyan 

 Caves of southeastern New South Wales, 

 Australia. This material consisted of six 

 jaws and three or four skull fragments of 

 animals characterized by the form of 

 their high, serrate, grooved and ridged 

 last premolar teeth. For over 50 years 

 Broom's original description and other 

 brief notes published in 1896 were all 

 that was known about the genus Bur- 

 ramys. In the 1950's two advances were 

 made. The first of these was made by 

 W. D. L. Ride (presently the director 

 of the Western Australian Museum at 

 Perth). He restudied Broom's original 

 materials and prepared and studied 

 other materials which Broom had col- 

 lected but not worked on. 



In Broom's day, the preparation tech- 

 nique for exposing travertine-encased 

 bones was to scratch away the lime rock 



to expose the contained bones. This 

 procedure could only be done after the 

 presence of bone was ascertained, by 

 breaking the rock or seeing suggestive 

 surface irregularities. Ride began to 

 restudy Broom's materials, using an acid 

 preparation technique which enabled 

 him to recover more of the contained 

 bones with minimum damage to the 

 small, delicate fossils. The reports on 

 Ride's findings, including a redescrip- 

 tion of Burramys parvus, appeared in the 

 Proceedings of the Zoological Society (Lon- 

 don) in 1956 and 1960. 



At about the same time that Ride was 

 working on the New South Wales fos- 

 sils, another discovery of Burramys re- 

 mains was made in southeastern Victoria 

 at the Buchan Caves. There, Norman 

 Wakefield (presently associated with 

 Monash University) discovered numer- 

 ous remains of Burramys which he re- 



