by e. h avi land. 187 



On Tooth-marked Bones of Extinct Marsupials. 

 By Charles W. De Yis, B.A. 

 Whatever may have been the cause of the extermination of the 

 herbivorous fauna of pliocene Australia, it is clear that while still 

 in the zenith of its vigour, it was kept in check by carnivorous 

 animals. About five per cent, of some hundreds of bones from the 

 Darling Downs awaiting examination, are pitted, scored, cracked, 

 chopped, and crushed by the teeth. They have in fragments 

 passed with the faeces through tha intestines of bone-eating beasts 

 of prey. Fully eighty per cent, of the remainder tell, in their 

 splintered fragmentary condition, the same tale of violence. On 

 the one hand, there is piled up a heap of the heads of femurs — 

 on the other are a few shafts, not one to the score of the heads. 

 Of the shafts themselves, many were of young animals whose 

 fallen epiphyses exposed a fairer grip to the jaws than was possible 

 upon their rounder and harder surfaces Of predaceous animals 

 as yet unanimously recognized in the drifts, the only one capable 

 of crushing large shankbones, say of M. Titian, is the fossil dog of 

 South Australia, identified by Professor McCoy, with Canis 

 Dingo — and to a dog which may be G. Dingo, the majority of the 

 groovings and indentations on the bones spoken of, are very likely 

 due. The indentations are generally angular pits, showing on 

 their sides and at their bottom, portions of bone crushed in from 

 the surface, and on applying to several of these pits, the major 

 cup of the great sectorial of the existing dingo, it is found to fit 

 them satisfactorily, or even exactly. Pieces of long bone again 

 show very distinct marks of gnawing-marks, faithfully copied by 

 the teeth of our yard dogs on the bones they delight in. By way 

 of confirming this interpretation of the tooth marks, it may be 

 mentioned that a coprolite, probably that of a dog, contains a good 

 sized fragment of bone. But the dog was not the only bone-eater 

 of the period. There is distinct proof, accepted by all who have 

 examined it, that Thylacoleo also was an ossiphagous animal. It is 

 yielded by a mandible of a young kangaroo, M afflnis, which has 

 been seized in the middle between the jaws of a Thylacoleo with 

 evident intention of crushing it. It was however, seized in an 



