'Tooth-marks of Tkylacoleo. 101 



without doubt due to human agency, that interest centres. 

 In regard to them it may be said at once that they have been 

 made either by man or by the bone-eating Thylacoleo carnifex. 

 No Dingo, Thylacine or Saixophilus could possibly produce 

 such cuts. 



As far back as 1859, Owen (16) published his well-known 

 memoir on Thylacnho, in which the skull was described for 

 the first time, and in which also the characteristic premolar was 

 stated to be adapted for piercing, holding and lacerating, like 

 the canine of a carnivore. Owens conclusions as to the nature 

 and affinities of Thylacoleo were stoutly contested by other 

 workers, notably by Falconer (8), Flower (9), and Krefft (10), 

 all of whom came to the conclusion that the animal was, in 

 the main, a vegetable feeder, and that the great cutting pre- 

 molar was simply an exaggerated form of the same tooth 

 molar was simply an exaggerated form of the same tooth present 

 in the herbivorous Hypsiprymnus { = Potorous), one of the so- 

 called rat-kangaroos. At a later period Owen was supported by 

 McOoy (14), De Vis (6), and Broome (2), and it is generally 

 admitted now that he was right, and that Thylacoleo was car- 

 nivorous in its habits. 



Mr. De Vis on three occasions has referred to the bone-cutting 

 power of Thylacoleo. In 1883 (6) he j^^^blished his paper 

 — -previously referred to — " On Tooth-marked Bones of Extinct 

 Marsupials," describing the occurrence on Darling Downs of 

 large numbers of bones that had been broken up by predatoiy 

 animals, instancing especially one of Macropus afjfinis, which 

 bore the mark of the teeth of Thylacoleo. In 1900 (4) he pub- 

 lished a paper, '' The Bones and Diet of Thylacoleo," in 

 which he described and figured first the ulna of a large kan- 

 garoo with cuts upon it, in regard to the making of which he 

 says, " The only two capable instruments known to me are the 

 tomahawk and the tooth of Thylacoleo."' He also figures other 

 bones bearing the marks of some strong cutting object, and, 

 amongst them, the mandible of a young kangaroo that '' has 

 been crushed inwards and downwards so that a deep and well- 

 defined area of impression has been left, and that impression 

 is a mould in the soft bone, of the surface of the tooth of a 

 young Thylacoleo. On the inner side opposite to this is another 

 impression, but shallower and with irregular vertical ridges 



