PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE FOSSIL MAMMALS OF AUSTRALIA. 
245 
1866;” accompanied by “a conjectural restoration of the then unknown anterior part 
of the skull and incisor teeth,” which, Professor Flower proceeds to assert, “ subsequent 
discoveries have in great measure confirmed”* * * § . 
I may here remark that, as my “ Description of an almost entire Skull of the Thylacoleo 
carnifex was “ Received June 8, — Read June 15, 1865 ” (Phil. Trans. 1866, p. 73), the 
anterior part of the skull and incisor teeth were not unknown in September 1866, nor 
at the date of Mr. Krefft’s paper, May 24, 1866. The degree of confirmation which 
the restoration of the skull, according to the herbivorous hypothesis, has subsequently 
received, may be estimated by the comparison of fig. 7, p. 233 and fig. 13, with Plates 
XI., XII. & XIII., and more especially with Plate XIV. of the present paper. 
Mr. Krefft in this communication, and in its conjectural illustration (fig. 13), inclines 
to refer Thylacoleo to the Carpophagaf, deeming 
it “ not much more carnivorous than the Pha- 
langers of the present time J”. 
But in the “List of the Fossils from the 
Caves of Wellington Valley,” appended to the 
‘Report to the Trustees of the Australian 
Museum regarding the examination of those 
Caves,’ Mr. Krefft writes : — “ 5. Teeth and 
bones belonging to the gigantic Kangaroo- 
Rat named Thylacoleo carnifex by Professor 
Owen.” 
Of the same opinion I infer to be Mr. 
Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., from the following- 
passage in his instructive paper “ On the Rhaetic Beds and White Lias of Western and 
Central Somerset: ’ — “ The presence of the Macropocla (Van der H.) ( = Poephaga , Owen) 
is proved by the discovery of the Kangaroo-Rat allies, — viz. in the Purbeck beds, of the 
Plagiaulax, the true affinities of which have been so amply demonstrated by Dr. Fal- 
coner § ; in the R luetic bone-bed, of the Microlestes of Frome and Dicgerloch, closely 
allied, according to Professor Owen, to Plagiaulax (Pakeont. p. 303); and, lastly, in the 
strata below the bone-bed, by the discovery of the Hypsiprymnopsis Rhceticus of the 
Watchet shore ”||. 
To the evidence and question of the affinity of Thylacoleo and Plagiaulax to existing 
groups or families of the Marsupialia I next address myself. 
* XII. p. 319. 
t Owen, “ Classification of the Marsupialia,” Trans. Zool. Soc. ii. p. 3 22. 
5 Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1866, xviii. p. ] 49. 
§ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xiii. p. 261, vol. xviii. p. 348. 
:i Id. ib. vol. xx. 1864, p. 412. But see the examination of the grounds of the determination of this rhaetic 
fossil as the tooth of a Potoroo, in my “ Monograph on Mesozoic Mammals,” in the volume for 1870 of the 
Pakeontographical Society, pp. 8-10. 
MDCCCLXXI. 2 L 
Fig. 13. 
Restoration of the skull and teeth of Thylacoleo, 
by Mr. Keefet, on the herbivorous hypothesis. 
(Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1866, vol. xviii. pi. xi.) 
