188 ON TOOTH-MARKED BONES OF EXTINCT MARSUPIALS, 



awkward fashion. On either side of the alveolar ridge, immediately 

 in front of the ascending process, is a conspicuous impression of a 

 tooth forced against the yielding bone. The characteristically 

 grooved upper tooth of Thylacoleo on the inner — the smooth lower 

 one on the outer side. As the beast's jaws met, their strength 

 was resisted by the row of teeth brought directly between the edges 

 of teeth closing upon it above and below, and the only effects 

 produced beyond the impression on the bone, were the splintering 

 of one of the kangaroo's teeth, and the longitudinal splitting of its 

 jaw on the inner side, below the dental canal. The upper 

 thylacoleonine tooth has left the mark of its whole length — the 

 lower of that elevation only which is seen on the posterior third of 

 its cutting surface. On the mind of the observer there remains 

 no doubt, that the so termed " marsupial lion" was indeed a 

 carnivorous animal, but though it might certainly have attempted 

 the fracture of the victim's jaw for the sake of its investment of 

 flesh, as the cat breaks and swallows the bones of her prey, yet the 

 first idea suggested by the specimen that it was one of the many 

 bones crunched for their own sakes, is probably the true one, and 

 for this reason some of the long bones of kangaroos bear across 

 them marks which at a glance might be mistaken for the effects 

 of blows of a tomahawk — marks produced by long straight-edged 

 incisive instruments, which sometimes struck more than once in 

 same groove — in a word, just the marks that would be left by a 

 pair of shear-like teeth, actuated by powerful muscles. No such 

 teeth save those of the thylacoleo, are known. From the present 

 evidence then, it would appear that there has been no mistake 

 made in pronouncing the animal to have been a carnivor, but that 

 it was a carnivor resembling in its habits of feeding, the hyaena 

 rather than the lion. That opinion is strengthened by the form of 

 the claws of which two perfect specimens, together with a third 

 suggesting a feebler species, have been obtained from the Chinchilla 

 beds. However destructive to the kangaroos, or at least to the 

 weaker of them it may have been, its mission was chiefly that of 

 a scavenger, and it could hardly have been an efficient agent in the 

 extermination of the Nototheridse. 



