23 



STUDIES IN TASMANIAN MAMMALS, LIVING AND 



EXTINCT. 



Number VII. 



By 



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



AND 



Clive Lord, F.L.S., Curator of Tasmanian Museum, Hobart. 

 (Read 20th March, 1922.) 



A NOTE ON THE TURBINOID CELLS AND ALLIED 



DATA OF NOTOTHERIUM MITCHELLI. 



When treating the skull of Notothermm mitchelli to ex- 

 tract the iron, and so render it fit for future preservation, we 

 carefully set aside the whole of the mud that came from the 

 nasal cavity, intending later on to search for fragments of 

 the turbincid bones. After considerable expenditure of time 

 upon the unpromising mass, we are now able to report the 

 recovery of about one half of one of the maxillo turbinals, 

 and herewith record the following facts. In structure the 

 texture is about twice the degree of coarseness that obtains 

 in the living Kangaroos, but its general structure is akin to 

 the turbinal of a Wombat, and departs considerably in out- 

 line from both that of the Kangaroo and the Native Bear. 

 The central laminae of these Nototherian bones were very ex- 

 tensive, and reached the vomer and palate by two vertical 

 plates, that pressed against the premaxillaries outwardly, 

 and the nasal septum rnesiad. The edges of the prenaxil- 

 laries, in these skulls, curve into the nasal cavity in t\v.) loop- 

 like folds, quite unlike anything found in the skulls of allied 

 Marsupials; and the walls of the nasal cavity are not bulged 

 outwards, at the roots of the zygomatic arches, as we find in 

 the skulls of Wombats, but slope straight backwards, all of 

 which means a relatively narrower turbinoid surface, but a 

 vertically deeper one. 



The region which, in the Kangaroos, gives rise to a 

 nasal spine (elaborated out of the pi'emaxillary) — that 

 reaches a maximum development in the extinct giant Palor- 



