The "Mika" or "Kulpi" operation of the Australian aboriginals / by T.P. Anderson Stuart.
- Thomas Peter Anderson Stuart
- Date:
- [1896?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The "Mika" or "Kulpi" operation of the Australian aboriginals / by T.P. Anderson Stuart. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![or a terminal incisor, and though Owen inclined to regard it as a canine, he admits the possibility of its being an incisor, in which case he recognised that the affinities would be more with the Diprotodonts, for he adds :— If, however, this be really the foremost tooth of the jaw it would be one of a pair of terminal incisors according to the marsupial type exhibited by the Macro- podidce and the Phalangistidob.* In 1866, through receiving further material from Australia, Owenf was enabled to describe the greater part of the skull and of the lower jaw, and to indicate fully the nature of the dentition. It was now clearly shown that the large anterior teeth were incisors which in Owen's opinion proved the Thylacoleo to be the carnivorous modification of the more common and character- istic type of Australian Marsupials, having the incisors of the lower jaw reduced to a pair of large, more or less procumbent and approximate, conical teeth or ' tusks.' \ Not only did the additional evidence confirm him in his opinion that Thylacoleo was a carnivore, but he considers that in this extinct form we have the simplest and most effective dental machinery for pre- datory life and carnivorous diet known in the Mammalian class. It is the extreme modification, to this end, of the Diprotodont type of Marsupialia.§ Beyond admitting its affinities with the Diprotodonts he does not seem to have regarded it as a near relative of any of the existing groups. But from his statements in the article on Palaeontology in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8th Edition, 1859, he apparently regarded Thylacoleo as related to Plagmulax. In 1868, Flower read a paper before the Geological Society of London— On the Affinities and probable Habits of the Extinct * Loc. cit. p. 318. [See also a later paper, Vol. 174, Pt. ii. 1883, pp. 576- 577.—Ed.] + On the Fossil Mammals of Australia. Part ii. Description of an almost entire Skull of Thylacoleo carnifex, Owen, from a fresh-water deposit. Darling Downs, Queensland. Phil. Trans. 1866, clvi. p. 73. + Loc. cit. p. 80. § Loc. cit. p. 81.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21467997_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
