THE 
GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 
NEW oB RIES: (DECADE Ul VOL.: xX: 
No. VII—JULY, 1883. 
roa Gr Ny Ac ay AstEy as ts Cee SS 
— 
T.—On an Ovriine or tHe Sxuut, Basan View, or THYLACOLEO. 
By Prof. Owen, C.B., M.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., etc., etc., 
Superintendent of the Natural History Departments in the British Museum. 
(PLATE VII.) 
HAVE just received from Mr. C. H. Hartmann, of the “ Range 
Nurseries, Toowoomba, Queensland,” a neighbour of my friend 
Mr. G. F. Bennett, to whom I am indebted for fossil remains from that 
locality (Megalania, e.g.), an outline of the entire skull of a Thylacoleo. 
It is a basal view of the skull in which the teeth of the upper jaw 
are indicated in situ, determinative of the genus and apparently species. 
The writer states, “I have only just drawn a pencil outline round the 
skull so as to give you the right dimensions'—the most remarkable 
appearance is that there is scarcely any brain, but very strong and 
thick bones.” 
The space left for the cranial cavity indicates the small relative 
size of its contents, characteristic of the marsupial Order, and, in this 
large Carnivore, of unusually diminutive proportions. The contrast 
is great with the expansion of the “‘temporal fosse” for lodgement 
of the powerful “biting muscles,” these cavities being bounded by 
correspondingly strong and convex zygomatic arches. The latter 
are features which had not before been shown in cranial fossils of 
Thylacoleo, the least mutilated of which is the subject of plate xvii. 
of my “Extinct Mammals of Australia,” but which, in comparison 
with the outline of the base of the skull transmitted by Hartmann, 
permits no doubt of the accuracy of his ascription of that fossil, which 
he terms “the head of the Marsupial Lion in my possession.” | 
I am in hopes of receiving photographs or casts of this unique 
fossil, if not the specimen itself, but meanwhile wish to record this 
additional evidence of the carnivority of Thylacoleo.? 
1 The details, wanting in the outline figure sent by Mr. Hartmann of the palatal 
view of the skull of Zhylacoleo, have been, as far as it was possible, carefully filled 
in by the artist, Miss Woodward, from the actual specimens in the British Museum 
(Natural History).—H.W. 
2 For further references to Thylacoleo see the following papers :—R. Owen, On the Fossil 
Mammals of Australia. Part I. Description of a mutilated skull of a large marsupial carnivore 
(Thylacoleo carnifex, Owen) from a calcareous conglomerate stratum, 80 miles 5.W, of Mel- 
bourne, Victoria (1858), Phil. Trans. 1859, pp. 309-322; Ann. Nat. Hist. iv. 1859, pp. 63-64. 
Part Il. Description of an almost entire skull of Thylacoleo carnifex, Owen; Roy. Soc. Proc. 
xiv. 1865, pp. 348-344; Phil. Trans. 1866, pp. 73-82; Ann. Nat. Hist. 1865, pp. 130-131. 
Part IV. Dentition and Mandible of Thylacoleo caynifex, with remarks on the arguments for its 
herbivority (1870), Phil. Trans. 1871, pp. 213-266; Dentition and fore limb, Phil. Trans, 1883, 
Proc. Roy. Soc. No. 224, 1883, and on Pelvis of Thylacoleo, Roy. Soc, April 26, 1883. 
DECADE II.—VOL. X.—NO. VII. 19 
