CIATTODON 



393 



Toxodon, Macrauchemia,^ and Protopithccv.s,\ are addi- 

 tional evidences of extinct South American Mammals, matched 

 only by species now peculiar to that continent. 



Australia in like manner yields evidence of an analogous 

 correspondence between its last extinct 

 and its present aboriginal mammalian 

 fauna, which is the more interesting on 

 account of the very peculiar organization 

 of most of the native quadrupeds of that 

 division of the globe. That the Marsupialia 

 form one great natural group, is now gene- 

 rally admitted by zoologists ; the represen- 

 tatives in that group of many of the orders 

 of the more extensive placental sub-class 

 of the Mammalia of the larger continents 

 have also been recognized in the existing 

 genera and species : the dasyures, for ex- 

 ample, play the parts of the Camivora, the 

 bandicoots (Perameles) of the Insedivora, 

 the phalangers of the Quaclrumana, the 

 wombat of the Rodentia, and the kangaroos, 

 in a remoter degree, that of the Ruminantia. 

 The first collection of mammalian fossils 

 from the ossiferous caves of Australia § 

 brought to light the former existence on 

 that continent of larger species of the 

 same peculiar marsupial genera : some, 

 as the Thylacine, and the dasyurine sub-genus represented by 

 the D. ursinus, are now extinct on the Australian continent, 

 but one species of each still exists on the adjacent island of 

 Tasmania ; the rest were extinct wombats, phalangers, poto- 



* Owen, "Fossil Mammalia of the Voyage of the Beagle," 4to, 1839. 

 f lb. % Lund. Annales des Sciences Nat., 2d series, torn, xiii., p. 313. 



g Mitchell's (Sir Thos.) Three Expeditions into the Interior of Australia, 

 8vo, 1838, vol. ii., p. 359. 



Fig. 138. 



Teeth of great extinct 

 Armadillo (Glyptodon 

 clavipes), Pleistocene, 

 South America. 



