ANNALS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM, No. 6 
29 
The general result of an inspection of these figures is that 
while the fossil is in certain dimensions in close accord with one 
or other of the recent skulls — sometimes of old males, sometimes of 
females — its measurements as a whole are quite different from those 
which obtain in H. australis. Perhaps the most strongly marked 
difference in the fossil is the comparative nearness of the fore 
end of the nares to the cheek bone, indicated by the first three 
measurements. This proximity is even greater than in No. 10, 
the youngest female of H. australis measured, while the breadth 
of the muzzle at its base and the strength of the circumnarial 
limbs of the preniaxiharies. are only equalled in the oldest of 
living males. The physiognomy must therefore have been pro- 
nouncedly different, broader than the average H. australis and 
considerably flatter, with eyes nearer to the end of the snout. 
To the comparative massiveness of the skull, a feature also 
indicated by the data, there is, however, a rather remarkable 
exception apparent in the malar. The distal portion of this 
bone, wanting on the left side, is on the right present, but 
separated from the rest of the skull by the loss of its 
proximal portion. The tabulated measurements of the malar 
in recent skulls refer to its minimum depth and thickness 
only, and so fail to indicate its actual strength. This would not 
be much superior to that of the fossil, were it not that it is 
vastly increased by the development of a deep keel on its 
lower edge. Of this keel the fossil malar possesses merely 
a rudiment no larger that in an immature female of the present 
day. The conspicuous feebleness of the zygomatic arch in a 
skull exhibiting superior strength everywhere else may be related 
to the inferior leverage exerted by the less produced jaw, or possibly 
to less masticatory power being demanded by the sea grasses 
on which the creature fed. It will be seen, as well from the 
table of measurements as from the figure, that the premaxil- 
laries anteriorly to the narial orifice are in the fossil broadest at 
the level of the nares, whereas in recent skulls their greatest breadth 
is across a lateral intumescence at some distance from the nares. 
As the intumescence is very feebly developed in the fossil, there 
ensues a considerable difference in the contour of the part. Viewed 
from above, the outline from the malar forward has an almost 
continuous trend towards the axis of the muzzle ; in recent skulls 
it is so undulatory as to form a " line of beauty," the only one 
attributable to the animal. In all available skulls of H. australis, 
the premaxillary suture is gaping, in the fossil it is closed 
and suggestive of greater compactness of the facial bones. On 
the whole it appears to the writer that there is sufficient reason 
for admitting a belief that this dugong was speciflceJly distinct 
from any existing species, and consequently that the genus HaAicore 
has had in the past a history of which we have now a slight insight, 
and may hope to obtain more. The most appreciable feature 
