ANCIENT RELICS

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 214, 19 August 1931, Page 7

ANCIENT RELICS

AUSTRALIAN DISCOVERY

j SYDNEY, August s.—The question, [ what manner of place was Australia j 25,000 years ago? was prompted the other clay with the arrival at the Australian Museum, Ui Sydney, of the massive jawbones of a large, fantastic animal that roamed Australia in the long years ago. Found during digging operations on the bank of a creek near a place called Willow Tree ! (between Murrudundi and Wen-is' Creek) in New South Wales, the bones were those of a nototherium, or .'marsupial tapir." The nototherium flourished all over Australia, and occurred also in Australia before that island was severed from the mainland. With it were diprot odon, the so-called giant wombat] (as large as a rhinoceros) and thy--lacoleo, the marsupial tiger. It is not! possible to say just when these queer i animals arose, or when they disappeared. Their remains have not been | found in Tertiary strata, and so it is surmised that they developed about I 1.000,000 years ago, and were gradu-j illy wiped out about 20,000 years ago.j if the latter part of this surmise i correct, it is probable that the los ininials existed when the first abor: finals arrived in Australia. The nototherium, whose jawbom now reposes in the museum was oiu of three or four different kinds. Rough ly about the size of a small bullock it appears to have been a slow-mov ing, clumsy creature, with a bulk] body set on short legs, and a massiv< head ornamented with four shor tusks on the jaws. It is fairly cer tain, however, that if males of th< nototherium persuasion did any fight ing it was only among themselves Their teeth indicate that they were purely vegetable-eating animals, ant did not attack other mammals. Cer tainly, they are not likely to have at. tacked men, though possibly thej could, if cornered, light in somewhal the same manner of wounded tapirs