6 
ANNALS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM, No. 5. 
A FURTHER TRACE OF AN EXTINCT LIZARD. 
Of the formidable lizard to which on the evidence of a single 
fossil tooth the name Varanus dirus was assigned (Proceedings of 
the Royal Society of Queensland, Vol. 6, p. 98), no additional 
knowledge has been gathered from exploration until lately, owing to 
a long continued deprivation of the means of prosecuting field work 
of that or any other kind, which has been the lot of this Museum. 
In the early part of last year, however, it became possible to allow a 
collector, Mr. Broadbent, to make a brief excursion to his favourite 
fossil-hunting ground at Chinchilla, where, among the few objects of 
interest which time permitted him to exhume, he obtained the bone 
which is the subject of the present note. As will appear from the 
drawing on Plate III., it comprises almost the whole of a right maxillary, 
containing three entire teeth and the stumps of five others. In the 
conformation of the jaw and proportionate size of the teeth V. 
dirus appears to be more closely represented in life by the Papuan 
species, P. salvadorii than by any of the Australian monitors. The 
three teeth preserved are the third, fourth, and fifth ; all the teeth, 
except, perhaps, the one foremost in the series, seem to have been 
equal in size, or nearly so, similar in shape, and set in close array 
with their bases in contact. In length and breadth this maxillary is 
about twice greater than that of an example of V. salvadorii, which 
measures, in the skeleton, 7 feet in length. With proportionate means 
of offence, a trunk equal in bulk to that of a crocodile, and the 
voracity of latter-day "gohanners," V. dims would, to an unarmed 
man, be a formidable antagonist, and must have been, amongst 
others, an efficient; agent in moderating the superabundant life of 
its times. 
