302 



EXTINCT MONSTERS 



to have resembled a modern Wombat. The restored skeleton 

 shown in Plate LV. will be presently explained. The history 

 of the gradual discovery of this strange marsupial may now be 

 briefly given, since it serves to show how little ground there is for 

 the popular belief that a Cuvier or an Owen could " restore " a 

 whole animal from a jaw, or even a single tooth ! Sir E. Owen 

 himself was obliged to admit that his first conclusion, drawn from 



FIG. 112. Skull of Diprotodon, a kind of Wombat, from Pleistocene strata, 

 Australia. A man's skull placed for comparison. 



part of a jaw of Diprotodon, was quite wrong, as we shall see from 

 the following account. 



The name l was given by Owen to part of a lower jaw of the 

 creature, obtained by Sir Thomas Mitchell in the Wellington 

 Caves, New South Wales. Five years later, a drawing of part of 

 a jaw with teeth reached England from the same source, and this 

 Sir E. Owen believed to represent a kind of Dinotherium, indi- 

 cating, for the first time, the occurrence of primitive elephants in 

 Australia ! In the same year, a portion of a molar tooth, associated 



1 Greek dis, twice ; protos, first ; odous, tooth. 



