BY CHARLES W. DE VIS, B.A. 191 



at Chinchilla associated with a number or bones which from their 

 characters and condition may well have belonged to the same 

 animal, and which have on the whole a strong macropodal facies. 



Its gluteal angle is 77^°, three times the average of the 

 measurements previously given. That so open an angle and 

 consequent loss of saltatory power should be recognised in any 

 member of the more typical genera of the Macropodidse or Pro- 

 temnodontidse is hardly possible. The present femur, though 

 equal in size to that of Palorchestes Azael, the largest of the 

 Macropods described by Professor Owen, cannot therefore have 

 belonged to a co-species, since the cranial characters of Palor- 

 chestes shew its approach to the normal kangaroos rather than to 

 the Protemnodonts whose skull presents some incipient affinity 

 with that of the Nototheres. It is rather in alliance with the 

 Protemnodonts themselves that we must seek the extinct owner 

 of the thigh-hone before us, and in Procoptodon Goliath we find 

 an animal not much inferior in size. To this genus, however, we 

 may reasonably hesitate to refer it. Of the once largely evolved 

 Protemnodonts we have a surviving genus in Halmaturus, and 

 though the trochanter in Halmaturus, at least in H. dorsalis, is 

 not so much elevated as in Macropus, the gluteal angle is still 30°, 

 and it can hardly be supposed that Procoptodon, one of its 

 relatives, diverged from it so widely in the activity of its hind 

 limb. It is, indeed, within the limits of possibility, that a 

 creature with teeth so aberrant as those of Procoptodon may 

 eventually declare itself but remotely allied to Protemnodon, 

 Sthenurus, &c, and that the femur under examination may 

 actually belong to it, but pending discovery, it appears to the 

 writer prudent to give these bones a distinctive name. In the 

 future a synonym of Procoptodon will probably cause less in- 

 convenience than a mistaken identification with it of bones not 

 belonging to it. The word Brachalletes is coined for the purpose 

 of expressing a conception of the contracted gait of the animal — 

 the specific name appended refers to the part taken by Sir A. 

 Palmer in the discovery of its bones. 



