AUSTRALIAN QUATERNARY CLIMATES AND MIGRATION 59 



the teeth of that animal and was pre-eminently fitted to judge 

 which cuts ok the Btminyong Bone could be ascribed to it, and 

 which to human agency. His discussion (De Vis, 1899) on the shap- 

 ing of the bone is pertinent to a general discussion of the shaping 

 of bone artefacts and is given here at some length. 



De Vis's figures 1 and 2 are reproduced here as Fig. 8, PL 2. 



.... At first sight t lie fossil appears to have been intentionally shaped to 

 adapt it to some instrumental use. It may, then, be convenient to confirm the 

 first impression by pointing out the marks of human workmanship which it has, 

 with more loss [sic ] certainty, preserved to us. It consists of part of the distal 

 half of a right rib, Hie seventh or eighth, of an animal so large that it could only 

 have been one of the greater Nototkeres, in all probability Nototherium mitchetti 

 Owen. It is perfectly mineralized in the usual manner, differing in no wise in 

 texture and colour from the well preserved contemporary fossils found else- 

 where. . . The length of the fragment is 154mm. ; by the loss of its central edge, 

 which has been split oil', its greatest breadth has been reduced to 42mm. On its 

 posterior aspect (Fig. I), there is at (a) an obvious flattening of the upper 

 part of the blade, the surface of the bone for a length of G5mm. having been 

 removed to an appreciable depth, and apparently by some mode of abrasion; 

 near the distal end of the split edge on the same side appears a marked hollow 

 (b). at the bottom of which the cancellous structure of the interior of the shaft 

 has been by the like means brought into view. 



So far the abnormal features observable are not of intrinsic importance. They 

 may have been the result of ordinary physical agencies of attrition. A similar 

 explanation of the condition of the lower end of the bone, or at least of one 

 edge of it, is. on the contrary, inadmissible. On its posterior face (Fig. II) the 

 rib has here been half sundered by a cut through its dense cortex (c) effected 

 by strokes of a sharp instrument. A little lower down on its opposite face (Figs, 

 land lid), it has been divided to a large extent, and the part beyond the two 

 nicks so made has broken off, the line of fracture naturally occurring between 

 them. The extreme edge of the fracture was brought to coincide with the inner 

 edge of the lower nick and this consequently presents a fairly sharp edge, ren- 

 dered somewhat jagged by adherent remains of the internal cancelli. The surface 

 of the lower nick (Fig. Id) is convex in both its directions of extent, but whether 

 this rounding off is the result of an original method of formation by filing, scrap- 

 ing or shearing tool, or by the subsequent grinding of a surface in whatever way 

 produced, is not to be gathered from the existing surface. In the latter case it 

 is of course quite possible that this bevelled surface also might have been the 

 outcome of mere physical action of a piece of rib lying in a watercourse or sand 

 drift with one end partially exposed; it is even possible that the severance of 

 the bone on this side of it was due to such cause. But those conjectures seem to 

 be entirely forbidden by the complete absence of any sign of abrasion on the 

 inner surface of the edge of the nick; the broken walls of the bone cells, even 

 at its extreme edge, are as sharp and prominent as they were left by their frac- 

 ture, and we are therefore driven to the conclusion that this surface, however 

 formed, was intentionally formed. That the surface of the upper nick — that on the 

 opposite side of the bone (Fig. He)— could not have been yielded by any 

 physical process, is on the other hand unquestionable. It is certainly the work 

 of "an animal possessed of a chopping instrument, and as far as we know the 

 only animal of the age of the Notoiherium that can excite even a passing sus- 

 picion is the so-called Marsupial Lion, Thylacoleo carnifcx Owen, a confirmed 



