178 



PEOrESSOE OWEN OX THE FOSSIL MAMMALS OE AUSTEALIA. 



The present representative of that species is from the same bone-cave as the type 

 fossils* ; it has been flattened or crushed from above vertically downwards. The facial 

 parts of the premaxillaries (22, 22') are on the same horizontal plane as the nasals (15), 

 which they suturally join. The frontals (n, n) have been pressed away from the 

 nasals along- the major pai't of the suture, and all the bones are more or less fractured. 

 To this condition the skull had been reduced before the drip of the cavern had 

 hardened the red mud about it. The process of clearing away such matrix was long 

 and tedious. 



Did the skull show the violence of a carnivorous troglodyte destroyer, or the effect of 

 some cosmical force operating on the breccia-bed of the cave If the former, the blunted 

 laniaries of our old Thylacoleo are the only animal dynamic in Australia capable of so 

 smashing the Wombat's head that I am as yet cognizant of. 



§ 6. JS^asal bones in Phascolomys Krefftii, Ow. — This species is founded on a fore 

 part of a skull (Plate XVII. figs. 2, 6) discovered by Gekard Krefft, Esq., in the same 

 bone-cave as the last-described fossil. It is as closely allied to the broad-fronted or 

 hairy-nosed Wombat as Phascolomys Mitclielli is to the bare-nosed continental species ; 

 and the value of the nasal characters comes well out in the comparisons determining the 

 present fossil. 



It includes the major part of the nasals (15), with the connected parts of the premax- 

 illaries (22) and maxillaries (21). The nasals are broad and flat ; their lateral margins are 

 suturally joined with a smaller proportion of the premaxillaries than in Phascolomys 

 latifrons (Woodcut, fig. 4, 22). 



The free anterior extremities of the nasals (15') show nearly the same form and pro- 

 portions as in that Woodcut ; their basal breadth, where the naso-premaxillary suture 

 ends anteriorly, is 1 inch 3 lines ; the length of the outer margin is 1 inch in a straight 

 line, but is rather more following the curve. The lateral suture, as it extends along the 

 maxillary (21), shows a slight uniform curve, concave outward. A portion of the left fronto- 

 nasal suture (11-15) indicates an oblique course from within outward and forward in about 

 the same degree as m. Phascolomys platyrhinus, fig. 3. I have not seen such course, as a 

 variety, of that suture in any specimen or figure of the skull of the recent Phascolomys 

 latifrons. Other instances of combination in the smaller fossil Wombats, such as are 

 now under review, of characters which respectively specialize the Platyrhine and Latifront 

 Wombats will be adduced in the present memoir. 



The length of the left nasal, as far as it is indicated by the preserved extent of its 

 suture with the frontal, is 2 inches 10 lines; the extreme basal breadth cannot be given, 

 on account of the side-fractures. 



The intcrnasal suture seems to be partially obliterated ; and tliere is a narrow elliptical 

 vacuity with rounded margins, situated ten lines from the tips of the nasals, six lines in 

 length and two lines in extreme breadth, which seems to be natural, though probably an 

 individual variety. I shall return again to this fossil in relation to other characters. 



• Mitchell's ' Throe ExpcditiouH into the Interior of Eastern Australia,' vol. ii. Svo, 1838, pi. 48. figs. 4-7. 



