642 MANUAL OF ZOOLOGY. 



part of the globe ; and they show that Australia, at no dis- 

 tant geological period, possessed a Marsupial fauna, much 

 resembling that which it has at present, but comparatively of a 

 much more gigantic size. In the remains from the Australian 

 bone-caves almost all the most characteristic living Marsupials 

 of Australia and Van Diemen's Land are represented ; but the 

 extinct forms are usually of much greater size. We have 

 Wombats, Phalangers, Flying Phalangers, and Kangaroos, with 

 carnivorous Marsupials resembling the recent Thylacinus and 

 Dasyurus. The two most remarkable of these extinct forms 

 are Diprotodon and Thylacoleo. In most essential respects 

 Diprotodon resembled the Kangaroos, the dentition, especially, 

 showing many points of affinity. The hind-limbs, however, of 



Diprotodon were by no means 

 so disproportionately long as in 

 the Kangaroos. In size Dipro- 

 todon must have many times 

 exceeded the largest of the liv- 

 ing Kangaroos, since the skull 

 measures three feet in length 

 (fig. 274). The affinities of 

 Thylacoleo are disputed. By 

 Fig. * u .-$\n\\Qt Diprotodon Awtraiis. Professor Owen it is regarded 



as being strictly carnivorous, 



and as finding its nearest living ally in the Thylacine. The 

 great feature in the dentition is the presence in either jaw of 

 one huge, compressed, and trenchant praemolar. This is 

 regarded by Owen as a " carnassial ; " but Professor Flower, 

 with greater probability, regards it as corresponding to the 

 great cutting prgemolar of the Kangaroo-rats {Hypsiprymnus}, 

 a view which is further borne out by the small size of the 

 canines in Thylacoleo. Upon the whole, therefore, Flower 

 concludes that " Thylacoleo is a highly modified and aberrant 

 form of the type of Marsupials now represented by the Macro- 

 podidce and Phalangisti&K, though not belonging to either of 

 these families as now restricted," and he believes that its diet 

 was of a vegetable nature. Under any view of its habits, 

 Thylacoleo is a very remarkable type of the Marsupials ; and it 

 must have attained a very great size, since the length of the 

 crown of the great prsemolar is not less than two inches and a 

 quarter. 



Order III. Edentata. The Edentates, like the Marsupials, 

 are singularly circumscribed at the present day. No member 

 of the order is at the present day indigenous in Europe. 

 Tropical Asia and Africa have the Scaly Ant-eaters or Pangolins ; 



