384 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS DINORNIS. 
From the proportions of the femur of Dromornis I infer also that those of the tibia 
and metatarse would be longer and more slender than in Dinornis elephantopus, and in 
a greater degree than is the case with the femur. Consequently the stature of Dro- 
mornis would be greater in proportion to the solitary bone by which we now know it 
than is that of the Dinornis elephantopus. We may therefore have a comfortable 
assurance that it indicates the former existence in Australia of a bird nearly of the 
stature of the Ostrich, but with relatively shorter and stronger hind limbs. 
The period at which this large wingless bird trod that singular land was that at 
which the elephantine Marsupial (Diprotodon) flourished. I have received remains of 
both this genus and the somewhat smaller pachydermal Marsupial (Nototherium) from 
the mass of drift and boulder deposit when this had been reached, at depths equal to 
that yielding the bird’s fossil at Peak Downs, in the sinking of wells in Queensland. 
The mineralized condition of these herbivorous mammalian fossils has suggested a 
comparison of them with the fossil remains of Saurian Reptiles from Oolitic and even 
older Mesozoic beds in England. Yet the Mollusca which have left their shells with 
the petrified Australian bones are of the same species as those still living in the fresh 
waters of the Condamine and its tributary creeks, in the bed of which so many evidences 
of extinct Marsupial life have been discovered. 
From the general analogy, not unfrequently pointed out, between the recent animal 
and vegetable forms of the Australian continent and the extinct ones of the European 
Oolitic beds, together with the massive mineralized condition of the ornithic and mam- 
malian fossils found deep in the enormous superficial accumulations of drift and 
trappean alluvium, we are led to surmise that Australia, or parts of that continent, 
have not been subject to the frequent movements by which the earth’s crust has been 
modified in the European continent, but that it may have been subject exclusively to 
the subaerial conditions of change from the period of the Oolitic deposits in our 
hemisphere. Thus: the Dromornis of Queensland may have been contemporary with 
the impressors of the ornithicnites of Connecticut. 
DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES. 
PLATE LXII. 
Dromornis australis. Right femur: nat. size. 
Fig. 1. Front view. 
Fig. 2. Ectotrochanterian surface of femur. 
PLATE LXIII. 
. Back view of the same femur. 
. Form of transverse section of middle of the shaft. 
. Form of transverse section of the same part of the femur of Din. elephantopus. 
= 
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