444 RESIDUE OF EXTINCT BIRDS OF QUEENSLAND AS YET DETECTED, 



of structural form occurring in a third genus, the fossil must be 

 assumed to belong to one or other of the genera named, and as 

 the spoonbills show greater fixity of type than the plurigeneric 

 ibises, the judgment is fain to follow even so dubious a clue to 

 freedom from perplexity. The specific differences from P. regia 

 and P. flavipes observable in the fossil are a greater flattening of 

 the proximal end of the shaft on its posterior surface and a 

 diminution of the transverse axis of its distal moiety, resulting in 

 a more cylindrical but more slender form. 



Two distal moieties of the tibia, with all the characteristics of 

 that bone in Platalea, but with size and proportions in accord 

 with the femur above described, may be referred to it with some 

 confidence that they belong to the same species. They at least 

 prove the existence of a spoonbill among the other birds of the 

 period, and thereby tend to confirm the accuracy of the preceding 

 determination. 



Pelicanus proavus, n.s. (PI. xxiv., fig. 6a and 6b). 



The small pelican for which a name is proposed reveals itself 

 in a left tarsometatarsal, of which the inner trochlea is mutilated, 

 but sufficiently perfect to show that it was distinctly longer than 

 the outer. By this character it is separated from all those birds 

 which have the lateral trochlea approximately equal in length, as 

 well as from those in which the outer is very evidently the longer, 

 and is associated with the birds of prey, diurnal and nocturnal, 

 kingfishers (Dacelo), Menura, Pitta, Podargus, Herodiones, Peli- 

 canus, darters, and grebes, and doubtless others. Its trochlea? 

 are not disposed nearly on the same plane, nor would a section of 

 its shaft be either crescentic or planoconvex in shape ; it is there- 

 fore foreign to the Falconidce, Strigidce, Menura, and the Megapodes. 

 Its distal expansion is gradual and subelongate, very different to 

 that of the Herodiones, which also have nearly co-equal trochlea?. 

 With the bone in the kingfishers, nightjars, pittas, and grebes 

 it cannot be compared. In Pelicanus, however, we find a complete 

 reproduction of the structural features of the fossil, displayed in 

 the same elongated pulley of the mid-trochlea, reaching with 



