48 



GEOLOGY. 



also at the present day bad peculiar modifications of their skeletons 

 characteristic of the class Marsupialia, and none are found out of 

 that region of the globe save a single small family called " Opossums," 

 or DidelphidcD, found in America. These little animals, with a small 

 banded ant-eater (Myrmecobins) ; the Bandicoot (Perameles) ; with the 

 larger Tasmauian devil (Sarcophilus) ; and the Tasmanian wolf 

 (Thylacinus) ; are either insect-eaters or prey upon animals smaller 

 than themselves. 



Most of the remarkable series of remains from Australia were 

 obtained from lacustrine and river deposits on Darling Downs, 



Fig. 16.— Skull of a large extmct Marsupial Carnivore {Thylacoleo carnifex), from the 

 Newer Tertiary Deposits, Australia. 



Queensland, associated with estuarine shells of the genus Melania, 

 and from the Wellington Caves, New South Wales. 



The earliest appearance of mammals at present known is in the 

 Trias formation, near Stuttgardt in Germany, and in the Kheetic beds 

 of Frome, Somerset, in which deposits minute detached teeth of some 

 small Marsupial Mammal have been found, whilst in the Oolitic 

 Period, when the Purbeck and Stonesfield rocks were formed, many 

 of these animals must have lived in this country, for no fewer than 

 fourteen genera and twenty-seven species have been founded by Pro- 

 fessor Owen and others upon the minute fossil jaws and teeth which 

 have been obtained from these formations. The fossil jaws of these 

 little animals (no bigger than those of a rat or a mouse) may be seen 

 in Table-case No. 15, together with others of a similar class from 

 Brazil. 



