608 
District.”* * * § This specimen was said to he in the possession of Mr. John Jardine, G-old 
Commissioner (now deceased), Gogango, according to the Railway Survey, is only 
three hundred and fifteen feet above sea-level. 
A portion of a lower jaw of a Bifrotodon, pronounced by Dr. E. P. Eamsay, 
Curator of the Australian Museum, Sydney, to be probably the young of B. 
ausiralis, or perhaps a new species, was found by Mr. T. Buckland on the bank of 
the Burdekin, opposite Gilgunyah Station. A cast is in the Geological Survey 
Museum. 
Taking the Maryvale, Burdekin, Peak Downs, and Darling Downs localities, from 
which remains of the extinct mammalia have been obtained, it will be seen that all these 
places are at considerable elevations, none of them being less than 900 feet above 
the sea-level. Caiwaroo, where Mr. Cotter’s fossils have been obtained, must be about 
400 feet above the sea. The doubtful instance of Gogango Creek would, however, 
bring the fossils down to 315 feet. The only instance of which I am aware of remains 
of the extinct mammalia having been obtained near the sea-level is that of the Eight- 
mile Plains, near Brisbane. 
There is abundant evidence f to show that in the southern Colonies the extinct 
mammalia existed in Pliocene times. On the other hand, in Queensland there is no 
evidence that they went back to the Tertiary Epoch, although it is quite possible that 
they did. Such direct evidence as we have, consisting of the association of the mammalia 
with fresh-water and land shells of species still living, would lead to the conclusion that 
the former were, in the Queensland area, confined to the Post-Tertiary deposits. Still, 
considering how imperfect is our knowledge of the Tertiary in Queensland, we may 
well be prepared for the production of fresh evidence on this point. 
The introduction of the peculiar Mammalian and Avian Tertiary and Post-Tertiary 
Eauna into Australia is one of the most puzzling problems offered by geological history. 
Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace says 
“ Marsupials are almost certainly a recent introduction into South and North 
America from Asia. They existed in Europe in Eocene and Miocene times, and 
presumably over a considerable part of the Old World ; but no trace of them appears in 
North or South America before the Post-Pliocene period.”} 
It must not be understood that the first appearance of marsupials in Europe was 
in Eocene times, as they are known as far back as Triassic. The migration of marsupials 
from Europe and Asia to America may have been accompanied or preceded by a migration 
from Asia to Australia by way of a land connection formerly existing. At any rate, 
marsupials make their first appearance in Australia in Pliocene times, and in great force. 
There is no paleontological warrant for the supposition that they originated in Australia , 
The migration of marsupials does not appear to have extended to New Zealand, although 
a land connection seems to have existed in Cretaceous times, but not later.§ The 
wingless birds of New Zealand and Australia, both fossil and recent, present evidences of 
former connection ; but as their avian ancestors may have possessed the power of flight 
and even of swimming, || their distribution may have been more rapid than that of the 
mammalia, and may have extended to New Zealand before the land connection was cut 
* Page 4. Brisbane : by Authority : 1870. 
t Notes on the Geology of New South Wales, by C. S. Wilkinson, p. 57. Sydney : by Authority ; 
1882. 
% Geographical Distribution of Animals, i., p. 155. London, 1876. 
§ Professor Hutton. “ On the Origin of the Fauna and Flora of New Zealand.” Presidential Address 
to the Philosophical Institute of Canterhury, Ist November, 1883, Pt.N., p. 17. 
II See A. B. Wallace, p, 451. Island Lite. London, 1880. 
