AUSTRALIAN MONSTERS 



rock. It is usually held, on account of the form 

 of the angle of the jawbones, that they belonged 

 to small marsupial mammals. They are very 

 small, few of them as much as an inch in length, 

 and one of them we have already seen in Fig. 



Fig. 134. — -Photograph of the morass or lake in South 

 Australia in which the remains of several specimens) of 

 Diprotodon have been recently discovered. One of the 

 skeletons is seen lying in the mud in the foreground. 



57 enlarged to ten times its natural length. 

 It is probably due to their density and hardness 

 that the little jaw-bones have been embedded 

 and preserved in these ancient rocks, whilst the 

 rest of the skeleton is lost to us. The first 



187 



