ANNALS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM, No. 5. 
7 
BONES AND DIET OF THYLACOLEO. 
In the year 1886 there was submitted to the judgment of 
osteologists (Pro. Roy. Soc. Queensland) a fossil femur bearing 
unmistakeable marks of derivation from some member, or close ally, 
of that strictly predaceous family of the Marsupialia, the DasyuridaB. 
The affinity then recogDised has not, apparently, been called in 
question. The animal, of which the bone is a relic, had at that time 
left to us no other known trace of its existence, uuless, perchance, there 
might be attributed to it those jaws of formidable name, whose 
pretensions to represent marsupially the " king of beasts," have been, 
and still are, so briskly, and from one point of view not altogether 
unjustly, oppugned — the jaws of Thylacoleo. Pending, of course, the 
discovery of teeth, not thylacoleonine, possibly to be found in skeletal 
association with a like femur, or the rise of some other objection 
nearly as cogent, it was then proposed to see in a bone of that size, 
proportions, and form a part of the almost unknown skeleton of the 
beast, over which science has waxed warm, if not weary ; and, since a 
phytophagous Dasyure is a thing hardly to be thought of, to 
disregard for the nonce the indications of a dental system, shown by 
experience capable of leading to contradictory conclusions, in favour 
of those given by a concomitant limb-bone, taken to be co-specifi ; 
with such teeth, and infer from it that Thylacoleo was no more a 
plant-eater than Thylacinus, to which, on the testimony of this femur, 
it was more nearly related than to any other Dasyure. 
Since that time two things have happened : one is that other 
femoral fossils from the same, and other bones from the same or a 
very like source, have been brought to light ; the other is that time 
has shown itself kindly disposed towards this line of argument, 
discrediting though it does the vegetarianism of the beast, 
in that it has not disclosed the teeth of any other marsupial 
in size compatible with this femur, and claiming affiliation with the 
Dasyuridae. The second thigh-bone which has presented itself for 
study is, with the exception of the head, complete, and is in all 
respects, save in exact equality of size, identical with the one already 
described. Its entire length to the summit of its great trochanter is 
12 mm. less, and it is proportionately narrower in the joints and 
slenderer in the shaft. A small reduction of size in all dimensions 
may be held to indicate sexual inferiority rather than distinction of 
species ; consequently the bone hardly calls for either detailed descrip- 
tion or portraiture here. Still less does the third example, the distal 
fourth of a specifically identical femur, which in its bad state of pre- 
servation serves only to support the others in showing that the rarity 
of their owners was not sufficiently. great to explain that entire 
absence of their teeth, which must be confessed if these are not to 
be seen in the much debated one3 of Thylacoleo. The other bones 
showing relations with Thylacinus in an equal degree, and in size 
proportionate to the femurs, are portions of a right and left radius, 
part of a tibia, and three calcanea. 
Radius. — Plate IV., figs. A, B. The only mammalian limb-bone 
which has a sufficient general resemblance to this to be at all compar- 
able with it is the radius of Thylacinus shown in the intermediate 
