178 
PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE EOSSIL MAMMALS OE AUSTRALIA. 
The present representative of that species is from the same bone-cave as the type 
fossils* ; it has been flattened or crushed from above vertically downwards. The facial 
parts of the premaxillaries (22, 22') are on the same horizontal plane as the nasals (is), 
which they suturally join. The frontals (n, n) have been pressed away from the 
nasals along the major part of the suture, and all the bones are more or less fractured. 
To this condition the skull had been reduced before the drip of the cavern had 
hardened the red mud about it. The process of clearing away such matrix was long 
and tedious. 
Did the skull show the violence of a carnivorous troglodyte destroyer, or the effect of 
some cosmical force operating on the breccia-bed of the cave 'l If the former, the blunted 
laniaries of our old Thylacoleo are the only animal dynamic in Australia capable of so 
smashing the Wombat’s head that I am as yet cognizant of. 
§ 6 . Nasal bones in Phascolomys Krefftii, Ow. — This species is founded on a fore 
part of a skull (Plate XVII. figs. 2, G) discovered by Gerard Krefft, Esq., in the same 
bone-cave as the last-described fossil. It is as closely allied to the broad-fronted or 
hairy-nosed Wombat as Phascolomys Mitchelli is to the bare-nosed continental species; 
and the value of the nasal characters comes well out in the comparisons determining the 
present fossil. 
It includes the major part of the nasals (15), with the connected parts of the premax- 
illaries (22) and maxillaries (21). The nasals are broad and flat ; their lateral margins are 
suturally joined with a smaller proportion of the premaxillaries than in Phascolomys 
latifrons (Woodcut, fig. 4 , 22). 
The free anterior extremities of the nasals (w) show nearly the same form and pro- 
portions as in that Woodcut; their basal breadth, where the naso-premaxillary suture 
ends anteriorly, is 1 inch 0 lines ; the length of the outer margin is 1 inch in a straight 
line, but is rather more following the curve. The lateral suture, as it extends along the 
maxillary (21), shows a slight uniform curve, concave outward. A portion of the left fronto- 
nasal suture (11-15) indicates an oblique course from within outward and forward in about 
the same degree as in Phascolomys platyrliinus, fig. 3 . I have not seen such course, as a 
variety, of that suture in any specimen or figure of the skull of the recent Phascolomys 
latifrons. Other instances of combination in the smaller fossil Wombats, such as are 
now under review, of characters which respectively specialize the Platyrhine and Latifront 
W ornbats will be adduced in the present memoir. 
The length of the left nasal, as far as it is indicated by the preserved extent of its 
suture with the frontal, is 2 inches 10 lines; the extreme basal breadth cannot be given, 
on account of the side-fractures. 
The internasal suture seems to be partially obliterated ; and there is a narrow elliptical 
vacuity with rounded margins, situated ten lines from the tips of the nasals, six lines in 
length and two lines in extreme breadth, which seems to be natural, though probably an 
individual variety. I shall return again to this fossil in relation to other characters. 
* Mitchell’s ‘ Three Expeditious into the Interior of Eastern Australia,’ vol. ii. 8vo, 1838, pi. 48. figs. 4-7. 
