On the discovery of the remains of a mastodontoid pachyderm in Australia / [Richard Owen].

  • Owen, Richard, 1804-1892
Date:
[1843]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the discovery of the remains of a mastodontoid pachyderm in Australia / [Richard Owen]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    On the Discovery of the Remains of a Mastodontoid Pachy¬ derm in Australia. By Prof. Owen^ F.R.S. To the Editors of the Annals of Natural History. Gentlemen, I HAVE lately received a letter, dated April 6, 1842, from Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, Surveyor-General of Au¬ stralia, in which he announces the interesting discovery of large fossil mammalian remains in that continent. The spe¬ cimens from the bone-caves in Wellington Valley, described in the second volume of Sir Thomas’s work on Australia, were, it may be remembered, remains of extinct species of marsupial genera now existing in that continent, and of a genus very nearly allied to the existing ones; the largest fos¬ sil, which had been supposed to belong to a Hippopotamus or Dugong, indicating rather an extinct gigantic Phascolome ; and there was not any conclusive evidence of a genus of pla¬ cental mammal in that collection*. The fossils, which my friend has now transmitted, incon¬ testably establish the former existence of a huge proboscidian Pachyderm in the Australian continent, referable to either the genus Mastodon or Dinotherium. These fossils consist of a portion of a molar tooth, and of the shaft of a femur with part of the spine of a scapula, and some smaller fragments of a long bone. Sir Thomas states, these are not satisfactory speci¬ mens such as I hope soon to send you, but being the first from the locality, I am anxious you should first hear of them. 1 can tell you but little of the manner in which they occur; but such bones are found on the Darling Downs—those ex¬ tensive plains which you will see marked to the S.W. of Moreton Bay on most maps of this country. They are at the * Mr, Pentland informs me that a bone of a large quadruped, apparently a pachyderm, fi'om the Wellington Valley, is, he believes, in the Museum at Paris.