ON REMAINS OF AN EXTINCT SAURIAN. \81 
strictly tropical coastal, as well our inland main stations, so that 
those periodically re-occurring disastrous droughts may be 
forecast and provided against. 
ON REMAINS OF AN EXTINCT SAURIAN: 
BY 
C. W. De VIS, M.A. 
Piates X.—XV. 
AT an early stage of our knowledge of the post-pliocene fauna 
of Queensland it became evident that aquatic reptiles, huge in 
their generation, were among the more frequent of its con- 
stituents ; great turtles were found to have inhabited the waters 
of the area now occupied by the Peak Downs, and saurian 
teeth, first observed by Stutchbury in the central districts, 
were collected by Daintree from Diprotodon breccia of the 
north. But important as was this evidence, that the permanent 
waters, and the climate of the post-tertiary period, were fitted 
to sustain bulkier reptiles than do those of the present, and 
potent as it was in teaching us to find without surprise, in other 
parts of the bone drifts, saurian remains mingled with those 
of the giant marsupials—it went no further. It hardly engen- 
dered, certainly did not warrant, an assumption that the fossil 
saurian is extinct in Australia, or in other words was not the 
same with one or other of the two now living there. True, its 
teeth, larger than and dissimilar to those of the present fresh- 
water crocodile so-called, were found associated with fresh water 
shells; but, as we know, the great crocodile of the coast frequents 
