108 Spencer and Walcott : 



It must be added that no indication of this character can be 

 seen in most of the specimens. Such a method of working the 

 bones would naturally not require anything like the great 

 power necessary to force this animal's shearing teeth through 

 bones of the thickness of those which have been operated upon. 



A noticeable feature a.bout all the cut bones, with possibly 

 a very few exceptions, is that they appear to have been cut 

 through by one tooth only, either the upper or the lower, as the 

 case may be, there being no positive traces of marks of teeth 

 on both sides of the bone or of the place where they met when 

 severance took place. This may be associated with, and pro- 

 bably explained by, the fact that, with the exception of the one 

 large piece (Plate XXXVIIl., Fig. 1), aU the specimens are frag- 

 ments of hollow bones, and that, therefore, it is more likely that 

 they were split by the pressure exerted in making the cuts, or 

 maybe they were broken longitudinally by the beast after the 

 transverse fracture had been effected. 



Through the courtesy of Dr. Stirling, Director of the South 

 Australian Museum, Adelaide, Mr. E. F. Pittman, Government 

 Geologist of New South Wales, and Dr. Hamlyn Harris, Direc- 

 tor of the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, we have been able 

 to compare the tooth-marked bones found in those three States 

 with the bones with which we have been dealing. 



First, to take the bones from South Australia, which were 

 collected from the bed of Salt Creek, Xormanville, by Messrs. 

 A. H. C. and F. R. Zietz, there is nothing of special interest 

 to he noticed such as we find in the specimens we have de- 

 scribed from Victoria. Nearly all the marks and cuts are 

 what might well be expected to be produced by an animal 

 possessing a shearing tooth like that of Thylacoleo. These 

 incisions consist mostly of straight, blunt gashes crossing the 

 bones more or less transversely; a few (Plate XXXVI., Figs. 3, 5) 

 however, show the characteristic curve of those we have fully 

 dealt with in describing the marked and cut bones from Pejark 

 Marsh, but in no instance is there anything to be seen of a 

 nature approaching the clean cuts right through the bone in 

 specimens from Pejark, which bear so great a resemblance to 

 the work of man. The bones are all fragmentary, being frac- 

 tured both transversely and longitudinally. Some of those 



