14 STUDIES IN TASMANIAN MAMMALS, LIVING AND EXTINCT, 



weapons were reduced to very small things, or actually 

 missing. We are fully alive to the fact that the sex ques- 

 tion comes strongly to the front here, and we hope to 

 fully deal with the whole question later on. The true 

 Rhinoceroses and Tapirs had generalized ancestors that 

 brought these two families exceedingly close together, and 

 so closelv did they simulate each other that the teeth 

 alone served to distinguish them. The Nototheria had 

 tapir like teeth, and, as Professor Owen demonstrated, as 

 far back as 1872, the nasal structure recalled the anatomy 

 of the Tichorhine Rhinoceros, but with the imperfect 

 material Owen had to work upon he was unable to say, 

 as we can to-day, that Nototherium mitchelli was a mar- 

 supial Rhinoceros, and not a marsupial Tapir like animal, 

 as hitherto assumed. The fortunate discovery of remains 

 of the Tichorhine Rhinoceros, embedded in the ice, en- 

 abled palaeontologists to speak with absolute certainty as 

 to the nature of the animal's horn, but the absence of 

 such an event in our case leaves grounds for conjecture as 

 to structure' and shape, to which set of circumstances we 

 must add the fact that the marsupials, as a group, are 

 well removed from the ancestral rhinoceros type 1 , and 

 accordingly the complex factors of "parallel evolution'' 

 have to be contended with. At present all that can be 

 said is that we have an animal with a skull built for 

 aggressive warfare with specially constructed cervical ver- 

 tebrae — powerful and shock resisting — nasal regions akin to 

 those of the Tichorhine Rhinoceros, plus a curious nasal 

 cartilage point (practically uniquei), which is evidently a 

 development, essential to the remoulding of the marsupial 

 skull, to tho special needs of the case. All these struc- 

 tures will, in due course, be dealt with, but at present 

 can only be glanced at. Evidence of the titanic battles 

 that this animal engaged in are to be found in the com- 

 plete smashing and partial mending of the collar bone, 

 the crushing in of the maxills-nasal region, and its sub- 

 sequent repair. The whole series of structures that in 

 Nototherium tasmanicum could have served no greater pur- 

 pose than a moderate resistance of force, are here, in 

 Nototherium mitchelli, built up to the strength essential to 

 the conducting of the fiercest aggressive warfare; and the 

 conclusion seems inevitable that the Marsupial Order, in 

 ages past, evolved a fighting group of Rhinoceros like 

 animals, of which the giant, Nototlierium mitchelli, was 

 one. The Palaeontologist De Vis worked hard to show 

 that Zygomaturus was a rare animal in its day, and made 

 many departures from the typical Nototheria, thus feeling 

 his way through fragmentary evidence to a segregation of 

 the two groups cited above. Professor Owen never saw 



