MARSUPIATA. 
13 
natural position with regard to the pelvis (fig. n), in which the 
lower jaw presents the angular portion curved inwards, and in 
which the molar teeth correspond precisely with those of the 
genus Didelpbys 1 , leaves no doubt as to the existence of mar¬ 
supial animals in Europe in the Eocene geological period : be¬ 
sides this Opossum-like animal, a lower jaw found in the same 
quarries 1ms been referred to the marsupial group—it forms the 
genus Pterodon of Do Bluinville : a small fragment of a lower 
jaw, having a single false molar in situ, found in the London 
clav formation, near Woodbridgo, in Suffolk, is supposed by 
Mr. Churlesworth* to have appertained to an animal of the 
marsupial group; I do not believe, however, that satisfactory 
evidence of the affinities of a quadruped can be deduced from 
such scanty materials. In formations considerably lower in 
the series than the Eocene—in the Stonesfield oolite—have 
been found several rami of lower jaws of small Insectivorous 
Mammalia, some of which, in their general form, and in the 
dentition which they present, approximate very closely to the 
Insectivorous Marsupialia; these, however, cannot, with pro¬ 
priety, be arranged in any known recent group of Mar¬ 
supialia ; they form the genera Thylacotherium , or Phascolo - 
therium , of Professor Owen. To the latter genus belongs the 
* See Cuvier’s Ossemcns Fossiles, 4 to. cd. 1822, tom. iii. p. 284, plate 71. 
: Magazine of Natural History for September 1839, p. 540. 
