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XYI. On the Fossil Mammals of Australia.—VdiYi I. Description of a mutilated Skull 
of a large Marsupial Carnivore (Thylacoleo carnifex, Owen), / row a calcareous con- 
glomerate stt atwm, eighty miles S.JF. of Melbourne , Victoria. By Professor Owen, 
V.P.R.S. &c., Superintendent of the Natural History Departments in the British 
Museum., and Fullerian Professor of Physiology in the Royal Institution of Great 
Bntain. 
Eeceived September 18, — Bead December 16, 1858. 
In a Eeport, No. X., on the Geology of the Basin of the Condamine River, by the 
Rev. Y . B. Claeze, to the Honoiu-able the Colonial Secretary of Australia, dated 14th 
October, 1853, is the following passage: — “It is probable that Mr. Stutchbuey, whose 
studies in palaeontology fit him for the search, will be so fortunate as to find the remains 
of an animal indicated by Professor Owen*, in the year 1842, of a carnivorous kind, 
for, as he says, ‘ some destructive species of this kind must have coexisted, of larger 
dimensions than the extinct Dasyurus laniarius, the ancient destroyer of the now equally 
extinct Kangaroo, Macropus Titan, &c., whose remains were discovered in the bone- 
ca\es of W ellington Valley.’ There were some fragments in the immense heap . of 
osseous matter accumulated by Mr. Tuenee, which appeared likely to belong to such a 
camhorous giant, but they were too small and imperfect to deserve conjectural descrip- 
tion.^ The discovery of what must have existed cannot be altogether incapable of demon- 
stration, and, therefore, such a verification of Professor Owen’s anticipation is to be 
hoped for on many grounds.” — p. 6. 
Now, although such verification has come to hand, I admit that the absolute terms in 
which the anticipation was expressed merit the mild rebuke implied by the italics in 
which those terms are emphasized in the quotation from the ‘ Report ’ by the accom- 
plished geologist of Australia. Eighteen years of scientific experience have engendered 
a more cautious tone in referring to inductive probabilities. 
The evidence of a large carnivorous marsupial, from pliocene formations in Australia, 
reached me not many years after my determination of the still larger herbivorous mar- 
supial, Diprotodon australis^, which first suggested the idea of the coexistence. That 
endence was received in the year 1846 with the accompanying letter from my esteemed 
friend and correspondent Dr. Hobson, of Melbourne : — 
Letter to Editor of ‘Annals of Natural History,’ November 1st, 1842, 
t Zoological Appendix to ‘Mitchell’s Three Expeditions into the Interior of Australia,’ 8to, 1838 
vol. ii. p. .362. 
2 T 
mdccclix. 
