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RECORDS OF W.A. MUSEUM. 
teeth and the highly-developed premolars of the Lion and other 
carnivora. Some authorities of repute, such as Falconer, Flower, 
Huxley, Krefft, and Boyd Dawkins, were of opinion that the animal 
was a vegetable feeder, “ being not much more carnivorous than the 
Phalangers of to-day,” and after years of discussion a compromise 
was suggested in the words of LydekkeP: “Fuller acquaintance 
with the anatomy revealed, however, its intimate kinship with the 
Phalangers, and when it was fully realised it was argued that 
Thylacoleo must be a purely vegetable eater. Many of the Cuscuses 
are, however, partly carnivorous in their habits, and in our own 
opinion it seems probable that in this respect their gigantic extinct 
cousin resembled them to a certain extent.” 
In Australia C. W De Vis, late of the Queensland Museum, 
and the late G. Krefft, of the Australian Museum, actively 
championed the two theories ; the former was greatly in favour of 
the “ carnivore ” theory, bringing forward as proof bones showing 
what were believed to be marks of the teeth of Thylacoleo ; the latter 
authority was, it seems, the original propounder of the theory which 
found the more general acceptance in spite of Owen and his 
followers. 
In support of his assertions, Owen declared that the highly- 
developed incisors had assumed the functions of the canines — a very 
unusual feature, which, however, in the opinion of the writer, is 
more easily explained than the presence of highly specialised 
premolars and degenerate molars in the cheek series of a vegetable- 
feeding animal, where the molar teeth are usually of such great 
importance in the task of crushing and pounding food. 
For a predatory animal, the well-developed canine teeth, 
separated by the incisor series, form an ideal mode of seizing, 
retaining, and killing prey ; a double grip is thus obtained, which 
is much more satisfactory than any hold that could be secured with 
the help of well-developed median incisors, such as those of the 
rodents and of Thylacoleo. 
This was a strong point brought forward in the arguments of 
Krefft and his supporters, for the examples of carnivorous rodents — 
1 Lydekker, Lloyd’s Natural History, Handbook to the Marsupialia and Mono- 
tremata, p. 260, 1896. 
