'Toot J I -marks of Thylacoleo. 117 



latter in the manufacture of some implement or other article. 

 We are, therefore, of the opinion that, notwithstanding the very 

 strong reseniiblance to man's work exhibited in the Colongulac 

 spe-cimen, it is not sufficient in itself to allow us to assert that 

 man actually made the cuts ; and the notes following on some 

 of the tooth-marked bones from Myall Creek, N.S.W., materially 

 support this view. 



We stated previously that these particular specimens from 

 Myall Creek bear wedge-shaped gashes which make them com- 

 parable with the Colongulac bone, and this fact considerably 

 discounts what seemed almost a certain belief, that the latter 

 bone received its outs from the hand of man. Strangely 

 enough, two out of the three bone fragments which exhibit this 

 feature are, like the Colongulac bone, apparently parts of the 

 4th metatarsal of an extinct marsupial of about the size of Palor- 

 chestes, only in those two cases we have the proximal and not 

 the distal half of the bones. The better of these two specimens 

 is illustrated in Figs. 4, 4a, Plate XXXVTIT. The bone is frac- 

 tured longitudinally frorrij end to end, but the side view shows 

 the natural surface with the short transverse gashes round one 

 end of it, resembling the impressions left by blows from a 

 blunt tomahawk. The wedge or V-shaped cuts, two of which 

 are seen in Fig. 4 at (a) and (b), occur beyond the transverse 

 cuts at the extreme end of the bone. On the other side of the 

 specimen, exactly opposite to (a), the larger of the two cuts, 

 a third one, (c), the largest gash of all, penetrates the bone 

 almost sufficiently deep to meet the cut (a). The end view 

 (Plate XXXVIII., Fig. 4a) shows the characteristic wedge-form 

 of the three cuts (a, b, c), and also the resemblance, on a reduced 

 scale, that they bear to the Colongulac bone. 



The difference in the two instances is that, in the latter, the 

 cuts are transverse, whereas in the Myall Creek specimens the 

 cuts are longitudinal. 



There can be little doubt that the V-shaped cuts in the Myall 

 Creek bones were made by the animal whose gnawing of the 

 bone has left prominent evidence, in the number of short trans- 

 verse gashes round the end of this and other specimens. We 

 have, in Thylacoleo — for to him must be accredited all the cuts 

 in question — an animal capable of producing by means of his 



