r>(5 



STUDIES IN TASMANIAN MAMMALS, LIVING AND 

 EXTINCT. 



Number XI. 



By 



H. H. Scott, Curator of the Launceston Museum, 



and 



Clive Lord, F.L.S., Director of the Tasmanian Museum. 



NOTES ON A MUTILATED FEMUR OF 

 NOTOTHERIUM. 



(Read 6th Auirust, 1923.) 



Among some recently acquired fraj^nients of Noto- 

 therium bones presented to the Tasmanian Museum by Mr. 

 Burnley, of INIella, near Sniithton, and therefore in the 

 locality of the Mowbray Swamp, is the shaft of a femur, 

 obviously that of a Nototherian calf. The bone lacks the 

 head and major trochanter at its proximal end, and distally 

 both the condyles are missing, yet in spite of the several 

 mutilations, the specimen is of especial interest. 



It is the thigh bone of an animal that has apparently 

 been hunted, and gripped by a carnivorous animal. Both 

 edges of the bone have suffered, thus suggesting a double 

 attempt at dragging the creature down, one of which was 

 made upon the outer side and a second from between the 

 legs. Two foes falling at a time upon a calf would equally 

 well account for the facts, and if the Carnivores of Pleisto- 

 cene Australia hunted in packs, this latter is the more likely 

 of the two possibilities. 



As a second femoral shaft of similar size, and appar- 

 ently the associate of the mutilated bone, is also present, a 

 very exact comparison of the two is open to us. The 

 wounded animal having escaped its foes, carried to the day 

 of its death the marks of the encounter, in the shann nf 

 two contracted bony areas, in which absorption in one in- 

 stance has reduced one edge to 1 nun. in thickness from a 

 normal of 30 mm. 



Externally, the .shaft has undergone a series of altera- 

 tions, resulting in the formation of a groove about 100 mm 

 long, with a thickened boundary edge that in one ca.se at 

 least formed a long boss that has extended beyond the nor- 

 mal outline of the diaphysi.s. 



