UY ruoiKsson sir t. \v. k. david, k.h.k.. ktc. i29 



and elsewhere on the mainland, was contemporaneous with 

 extinct marsupials, such as Thylncoleo, Diprotodon, etc.; also 

 at the Wellington Caves, a human molar tooth was found, 

 apparently in sit7i, in the cave breccia. There can be little 

 doubt that the dingo was brought into Australia by the early 

 emigrating Australian aboriginal. The dingo, therefore, on 

 the mainland, dates back to at any rate late Pleistocene time. 

 The Tasmanian aborigines had no knowledge whatever of the 

 dingo, which evidently was blocked from getting into Tas- 

 mania through the flooding of the old isthmus joining Tas- 

 mania to the mainland, by the waters of Bass Strait having 

 already become "un fait accompli" before the dingo reached 

 the shore of south-eastern Victoria. If, therefore, the Aus- 

 tralian aboriginal dates back to late Pleistocene time, the 

 Tasmanian aboriginal must be relegated to an older period 

 still. Incidentally, it may be remarked that the survival in 

 Tasmania of Thylaciims and SarcophUns is directly due, in 

 the opinion of Sir Baldwin Spencer, to the absence from that 

 island of the dingo. Thylacinns and Sarcophilus ranged over 

 nearly the whole of Australia in late Pleistocene time, but 

 have now become wholly extinct through having been exterm- 

 inated by the dingo. 



b. Reference has already been made to this considera- 

 tion (b) on page 119,, and the reader is referred to the 

 paper by Messrs. H. H. Scott and Clive E. Lord. With the 

 exception of the bones of the extinct emu, Dromormn 

 oustruliti, showing evidence of having been hacked by aborig- 

 inal implements, according to the Rev. J. E. Tenison Woods, 

 no traces have been found so far of any marks loft by 

 aborigines on bones of extinct vertebrates, either in Aus- 

 tralia or in Tasmania. The bones of extinct kangaroo now 

 preserved in the Ballarat Museum, and stated to show toma- 

 hawk cuts, must be looked upon as doubtful evidence of the 

 contemporaneity of man. The observations of Heber Long- 

 man, Curator of the Brisbane Museum, show the clearest 

 possible evidence of deeply-cut incisions made by the car- 

 nassial teeth of Thylncoleo on the bones of his herbivorous 

 contemporaries. It is highly probable that cai-eful search 

 in the future may reveal the presence of some marks left by 

 man on the .skeletal remains of extinct marsupials or mono- 

 tremes. This is a i)oint to which the attention of future 

 observers might well be directed. 



