[Pboc. Rot. Soc. Victoria. 30 (N.S.), Pt. I., 1917J. 



Aht. Y.—New or Little-known Victoria/a Fossils in the 

 National Museum. 



Part XXI. — Some Tkrtiaky Cetacean Remains. 



By FREDERICK CHAPMAN, A.L.S., &c. 



(Palaeontologist, National Museiun, Melboiirne). 



(With Plates IV. and V.). 

 [Eead 12th July, 1917]. 



Introduction. 



The following notes embrace descriptions of teeth of two new 

 cetaceans, one of which is a second Australian species of the extinct 

 genus of sperm whales, Scald icetvs, namely, S. lodge i. The other 

 form is a tooth referred to tlie living genus Sfeno, a dolphin which, 

 so far as I am aware, has not been previously noted in the fossil con- 

 dition. Both types are from the Lower Pliocene or Kalimnan series. 



A new locality is given for the tooth of the great sperm wdaale, 

 Physetodon haileyi, whilst an incisor of the squalodont genus, Paras- 

 qualodon, is newly recorded from Leigh River, near Shelf ord, an 

 occurrence which helps to confirm the Miocene age of these particular 

 beds. 



Probably the most interesting cetacean discovery from a distribu- 

 tional point of view is the occurrence in the Victorian Kalimnan 

 (Lower Pliocene) series, of Owen's ziphoid species, Mesoplodon com- 

 pressus. This genus of beaked whales is already represented in the 

 Victorian Janjukian (Miocene) beds by the strap-shaped tooth of 

 Mesoplodon geelongensis, McCoy sp. Cranial rostra belonging to 

 several species of Mesoplodon are also found in the Pliocene of Eng- 

 land, Belgium and Italy, and about eight species still exist. Until 

 the present occurrence, the rostra of this genus were only known in 

 the fossil condition from the northern hemisphere, but six of the 

 species now found living have their habitat in the Southern Ocean 

 and adjacent seas. 



The following remarks on tlie genus Mesoplodon by Prof. Flower 

 have an especial interest to students of Australian recent and fossil 

 cetaceai : " The geographical distribution of the group has a very 

 great interest in relation to that of many other Australian groups, 

 both of vertebrates and invertebrates. Among the earliest known re- 



1 Trans. Zool. Soc. Lon.l, vol. .\., 1878, p. 436. 



