75 



A REVIEW OF THE F08SIL JAWS OF THE ]l AC RO- 

 FODID.E IX THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM. 



By C. W. De Vis, M.A., Correspoxdixc; Member. 



(Plates xiv.-xviii.) 



The motive to the present inquiry was a desire to ascertain 

 whether additional light might not be thrown on an interesting 

 portion of the Nototherian fauna by the large number of Macro- 

 podine jaws, rescued from time to time from the drifts of the 

 Darling Downs, which have been reduced to specitic order. It 

 was a task attempted some years ago, and promptly laid aside : 

 partly on account of the uncertainty attaching to the identifica- 

 tion of specimens with the types described and figured by Owen : 

 partly in view of the existence of species unknown to that 

 author and the necessit}^ of giving them maturer consideration : 

 partly in the desire to gather a larger body of illustrative 

 material : partly in the hope that when the Volume of the British 

 ]\Iuseum Catalogue of Fossil Marsupials should be published the 

 labour of determination would be greatly eased. As that hope 

 has been in a measure realised, and as once fertile sources of 

 accumulation have temporarily ceased to be productive, the local 

 investigator, though still compelled to trust very much to his own 

 material and his own judgment, ventures upon the work. 



Preparatory to tlie examination of so consideral:)le a number 

 (over eleven hundred) of dissociated jaws and portions of jaws, 

 wherein specitic differences are obscured by that general resem- 

 Ijlance in molar form which pervades their several groups, it 

 seemed judicious to ascertain, as far as possible, the nature and 

 range of the variations, individual and specific, in living Macropods 

 which are exemplified by the fossil jaws notwithstanding their 

 imperfections. Provision has therefore been made of skulls of 

 several kinds of Kaniraroos and Wallabies in number suflicient to 



