THE 
GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 
NEW seRibos., DECADE VV." VOL. IV. 
No. VIII.— AUGUST, 1907. 
ORG aeNeAT yy AGkueb Eb Gar ren Sse 
I.—On a Reconsrructep SKELETON oF DrprRoTODON IN THE BRITISH 
Museum (Narurat Hisrory). 
By Arruur SmirH Woopwarp, LL.D., F.R.S. 
(PLATE XY.) 
OR many years paleontologists have anxiously awaited the 
reconstruction of the complete skeleton of Dvprotodon by 
Dr. E. C. Stirling, Mr. Zietz, and their colleagues in the South 
Australian Museum. In 1893, when it was announced that numerous 
nearly complete skeletons of this gigantic extinct marsupial had been 
discovered in the arid interior of South Australia,’ it was hoped that 
all details of its osteology would soon be known; but the difficulties 
of excavating and transporting the fragile bones, and the skill and 
patience needed in preparing them after they reached the Museum in 
Adelaide, were so considerable as to necessitate long delay in obtaining 
satisfactory results. At last, however, a mounted reproduction of 
a skeleton has been completed in plaster, and Dr. Stirling has 
published three excellent photographs of the specimen in the 
‘Report of the Board of Governors of the Public Library, Museum, 
and Art Gallery of South Australia for 1905-6,” lately received. 
The Governors of the South Australian Museum have given a copy 
of this restoration to the University of Cambridge, where it is now 
mounted in the Museum of Zoology. They have also generously 
presented to the British Museum a set of actual limb-bones and 
caudal vertebre, with sufficient plaster casts to complete the 
reconstructed skeleton which is shown in Plate XV. As this 
restoration differs in some respects from that in Adelaide, it appears 
to need a brief explanation. 
The head and the presacral part of the vertebral column in 
the British Museum specimen are exact copies in plaster of the 
reconstruction in Adelaide. The skull, unfortunately, is only 
a restored model, all the original specimens from Lake Callabonna 
being too much crushed for satisfactory use. The precise shape of 
the skull of Diprotodon, in fact, still remains to be discovered; for 
a recent careful examination of the specimen from Queensland 
1 E. C. Stirling: Proc. Zool. Soc., 1893, p. 473; also ‘‘ The Recent Discovery 
of Fossil Remains at Lake Callabonna, South Australia”: Nature, vol. 1 (1894), 
pp. 184-188, 206-211. 
DECADE V.—VOL. IV.—NO. VIII. 22 
