133 



DESCRIPTION OF MAXILLARY, MANDIBULAR, AND DENTAL FOSSILS 

 OF THE Thylacoleo carnifex; WITH REMARKS ON OBJECTIONS TO 

 THE AUTHORS DETERMINATION OF THE NATURE AND HABITS 

 OF THE SPECIES. 



The relations of the extinct Australian Marsupial, which forms the subject of the two 

 preceding sections of the present work, to the members of the pouched Order charac- 

 terized by a single pair of incisor teeth in the lower jaw have been generally admitted. 

 But, since the communication of this comprehensive and briefly expressed view of the 

 affinities of Thylacoleo in a paper read to the Royal Society of London, June 15th, 1865*, 

 several eminent and experienced investigators of Fossil Remains have endeavoured to 

 determine to which of the groups specified at p. 131 the Thylacoleo was most closely or 

 immediately allied. Some have been led to the belief of its having been a Kangaroo, 

 some have deemed it a Potoroo or Rat-Kangaroo, others would rank it with the arboreal 

 Phalangers or Koalas; but all concur in repudiating its carnivorous character, have 

 rejected the distinct section of Diprotodont Marsupials, of which Thylacoleo and Plagi- 

 aulax are exemplars, and have sought, with more or less ingenuity, to invalidate the 

 conclusions which I had been led to deduce from the parts of the fossilized remains of 

 those paucidentate Marsupials which, at that date, had been submitted to my examination. 



The relevancy of such objections to my determination of Plagiaulax is considered in 

 the 'Prefatory Notice,' pp. 88-106. In the present Section I propose to append to the 

 description of the Thylacolean fossils received since 1865, a like consideration of the 

 arguments, objections, and imputations to which my papers on Thylacoleo have given rise. 



In these, the substance of which is embodied in the two foregoing sections, I inferred, 

 from the size and position of the socket of the anterior tooth, from the structure of the 

 root of the tooth therein implanted, and, above all, from the characters of the associated 

 and completely preserved teeth, that such front tooth must have been laniariform, i, e. 

 subcompressed and pointed, adapted for piercing, holding, and lacerating, like the canine 

 of a Carnivore f. 



To this the late laborious and experienced palaeontologist, Dr. Falconer, objected 

 that, in referring to my paper, he finds " that the body of the tooth, of which the shape 

 and direction are adduced as terms of comparison, together with the fore part of the 

 symphysis, is wanting " J. 



* Published in the Philosophial Transactions, 1856, p. 73. 



t Philosophical Transactions, 1859, p. 318 ; ib. 1866, pp. 79, 80. 



t Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, June 1862, vol. xviii. p. 353 ; also ' Palaeontological Memoirs 



4* 



