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PAPERS READ. 



I 



A THYLACINE OF THE EARLIER NOTOTHERIAN 

 PERIOD IN QUEENSLAND. 



By C. W. De Vis, M.A., Cork. Mem. 



We have it on the authority of the late Sir R. Owen, confirmed 

 by Mr. Lydekker, that the smaller of the examples of Thylacine 

 jaws from the Wellington Caves which have reached the hands of 

 those authors " cannot be distinguished from large male indivi- 

 duals of Thylacinus cynocephalusj" the existing species."^ To 

 that species they are referred by Owen, while Lydekker regards 

 them provisionally as belonging to the weaker sex of Owen's 

 T. spelceus. Of T. spelcbus itself all we know is derived from the 

 improved figure of the type specimen given by Owen on Plate v. 

 fig. 9, of his 'Extinct Mammals of Australia,' and from his account 

 of that and other examples of the species in the text of the same 

 work (p. 106), where he says — "In Thylacinus Tnajor ( = spelcetosj 

 the upper canine is proportionately longer in comparison with the 

 lower than it is in Thylacinus cynocephalus : the other osseous 

 and dental characters, so far as they are at present represented 

 by fossils, indicate chiefly a superiority of size as compared with 

 the still existing Tasmanian species." We are then at liberty 

 to assume that apart from relative size there are no salient 

 differences between these two species other than a larger upper 

 canine in the Cave Thylacine, and are consequently free to record 

 the occurrence of a Thylacinus also larger than the living species 

 but differing from it in so many expressive features as almost to 

 exclude the possibility of its identification with a species so closely 

 resembling the latter as T. spelceus. Remains of a Thylacine 

 have for some years been present in the Queensland Collection, 

 where they have been left unlabelled because they excited a 

 strong suspicion that they differed too much from the living 



* Catalogue of Fossil Mammals in the British Museum, Pt. v. p. 264. 



