n8 LIFE OF FLOWER 



more common and characteristic type of Australian 

 marsupials, having the incisors of the lower jaw re- 

 duced to a pair of large, more or less procumbent and 

 approximately conical teeth, or * tusks.' " Not only did 

 the additional evidence serve to confirm Sir Richard in 

 his view of the carnivorous propensities of Thylacoleo, 

 but he considered that in this extinct form we have "the 

 simplest and most effectual dental machinery for pre- 

 datory life and carnivorous diet known in the mammalian 

 class. It is the extreme modification, to this end, of the 

 diprotodont type of marsupialia." 



Beyond, however, admitting its affinities with the 

 diprotodonts, Sir Richard Owen does not appear in this 

 later paper to have regarded Thylacoleo as a near relative 

 of any of the existing forms ; but in the article on 

 '* Paleontology " in the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica, published in 1859? ^ e seems to have con- 

 sidered it allied to Plagiaulax of the Purbeck strata of 

 Dorsetshire, which had been shown by Dr. Hugh 

 Falconer to be probably of herbivorous habits. 



Sir William Flower, in the aforesaid paper in the 

 Geological Society's Quarterly Journal for 1 868, while 

 agreeing with Owen that Thy/acoleo was related to the 

 diprotodont rather than to the polyprotodont carni- 

 vorous marsupials, differed from the conclusion that it 

 was a carnivore. While the large cutting premolar teeth 

 were considered by Owen to resemble the carnassial 

 teeth of a lion, Flower was struck by their similarity to 

 the corresponding teeth of the rat-kangaroos and the 

 phalangers. After discussing the other teeth, he 

 concluded that "in the number and arrangement of 

 these teeth . . . Thylacoleo corresponds exactly with 



