OCCURRENCE OF A SUBMERGED FOREST. 179 
fed upon the Dugong, and we should be glad of any information 
bearing on this subject. The date of this ancient Dugong feast 
at Shea’s Creek cannot be stated in terms of years. As regards 
the downward limit in time we have the evidence of the shells 
and of the trees, all of which belong to existing species. The date 
of the feast cannot therefore be moved back below the limits of 
Post-Tertiary time. In view of the probable specific identity of 
the species of the Dugong now discovered. with existing species, 
it is questionable whether it is likely that the date can be carried 
back into Pleistocene time. 
As regards the upward limit, the following considerations 
suggest themselves :—The uppermost of the bones discovered lie 
at a level of six inches below low water, and the lowest at three 
feet six inches below low water. It might be argued from this 
that the animal was stranded in shallow water at low tide and 
cut up in the shallow water by the Aborigines at a time when the 
general level of the ocean was much as it is at the present day. 
The occurrence, however, of the peaty horizon (d) just six inches 
above where the remains of the Dugong were found seems to pre- 
clude this hypothesis, as the evidence shows that after the skeleton 
had become silted up in the estuarine beds, swamp conditions 
extended over the spot, as shown by roots of shrubs, found in this 
peaty horizon. It would obviously have been impossible for such 
shrubs to grow below sea level, and they would have been at least 
five feet below mean high tide, unless the level of the ocean has 
risen since the burial of the Dugong, as must obviously have been 
the case. . 
OO en ce 
41 1 i. 3 _ 7 
The Dugong having been captured and killed by the aborigines, 
its body was towed or dragged in the water during flood tide until 
the water became too shallow to tow it any further inland. It 
may then have been taken into water about three feet deep or less, 
and as the lowest of the bones are a trifle over three feet below 
Present lower water, the level of present low water probably — 
represented the level of high water at that period ; in other words — 
