A NEW FOSSIL GIGANTIC BIRD OF AUSTRALIA.

Timaru Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 1761, 26 June 1877, Page 3

A NEW FOSSIL GIGANTIC BIRD OF AUSTRALIA.

(Condensed from the Sydney Mornino Herald.) A paper on " Dromornia Australia (Owen), a New Fossil Gigantic Bird of Australia," was read by the Rev. W. B. Clarke, M.A., F.R.S., at the meeting of the Royal Society, on June 6 : — In the year 1809 a letter of mine appeared m the Sydney Morning Herald on a subject of some interest to Australian naturalists. A discovery had recently been made of the fossilised femur of a bird resting on a block of granite, at a depth of 188 ft., m the superficial beds of Peak Downs, m Queensland, about latitude 22de<*. 40min. S. , ° This femur was submitted 'to examination by the Curator of the Australian Museum, and was compared by him and myself with New Zealand specimens of femora of the genus Dinornis. We came to the conclusion that the bone belonged to a species of moa. This was afterwards stated by me m a communication to the Geological Magazine (vol. vi., p. 283), m which I dwelt, perhaps prematurely, on the supposed evidence offerod by this boife of a former connexion between New Zealand arid Australia, inasmuch as flightless birds could{uot have passed so wide an ocean as intervenes between these countries. In my Remarks on the Sedimentary Formations of New South Wales I have considered that connexion m another light. Since 1869 I have been on the look-out for additional evidence as to Dromornis, but not till 1876 did I meet with any. In January of that year, when at Goree, nearMudgee, I received intimation that a large bone had been disinterred from a depth of 200 ft. at the Canadian* Gold Lead. On going that day, with my friend Mr Lowe, I found the bone m the possession of Mr Dietz, a former correspondent of mine on mineral matters ; but not (as I suspected from the first account of it given to me), a femur or other limb bone of Diprotodon, but a fragment of the pelvis of a bird, which was considered by some of the diggers to be the head of some animal. This fragment was placed m my hands for examination. On arriving m Sydney, I took it to the museum for comparison, and came to the conclusion that it had also resemblance to Dinornis, but was not the pelvis of the true emu. Photographs of it were afterwards sent by me to Professor Owen, and a model of it was afterward* made by the taxidermist of the museum for that institution, from the trustees of which I received a copy. The original pelvis I sent on to Professor Owen by Captain Pile, of the Patriarch. The latter had not reached its destination on the 31st January, 1877, the date of the professor's last letter to me ; but m a former letter, under date of August 1, 1876, he wrote thus :— "I have to-day received your note of 9th June, with the accompanying photographs. I make out the left acetabulum and surrounding parts of the pfelvis of a bird about the size of Dinornia ingens, but different m certain proportion of parts." On the sth December he writes :— " As to the big wingless bird, the only bone yielding information testified against its Moa-ship. Your later pelvic fragment (m the photo.) does not speak decidedly pro or con. This gossiping concealment will keep till I receive your kindly transmitted box, when its contents will have n>y best attention, and the results will be annexed." On 31st January ho adds : — " I will no longer defer posting the previous note with this supplement, because since writing on sth December, I have had the lower portion of a tibia, found m the Gambier Ranges, sent from South Australia. It corresponds m size and condition of petrification with the femur figured m the paper, and being a more decisively characteristic bone than that, as both are, when compared with a portion of pelvis, I have sent a description of it, with accompanying drawings, to our Zoological Society. This bone determines beyond question, the fact of the former existence m the Australia* of a wingless or flightless bird of the size of Dinornis elephantopus, but of a genus nearer akin to Casuarius or Dromarius. The probabilities are that the femur of the Breccia Cave of Wellington Valley, that described, your portion of pelvis, and the South Australian tibia are parts of the same genus, if not species. It is more convenient and conducive to progress to record them, until proof to the contrary be had, as parts of Dromornis Australia. And we now have indications of the former extensive range of the bird on your great continent." Whether any further communication from the distinguished professor alter or confirm his present determination remains to be seen. But of this most interesting fact we may be assured, that m addition to the gigantic marsupials of which the public are generally aware, there also existed m past days over a wide region of Australia a gigantic bird, or birds, of which we shall soon know more ; and then we shall see fresh proof of the extraordinary facts which I noticed m connexion with the Queensland femur (Address to Royal Society, N.S. W., 1870), that m all the tracts of land m the southern hemisphere, isolated or continental, flightless

biidsliave roamed over extensive regions, [ nr.d Mint, as m New Zealand, so m Australia, there were ornithic giants. ■ Whether, therefore, the inquiry bo re- j "Pecting Dinoriii3 or Dromornis, Am- | tralia comes into the category with the ] mca of New Zealand, the epiornia of | Madagascar, the dodo of Mauritius, ani | tho solitaire of Rodriguez, all of whom aro now extinct. In closing this brief account of the progress of inquiry as to an Australian fossil flightless bird, which I hope will have the j effect of inducing researches by others, I cannot resist pointing out, m the words of Professor Ower, that there is another jf tho giants of tho past of which more is required to be known. He says, m concluding his last letter to me, "How strange it is that no tooth, or portion of iaw, or fragment of skull of the contemporary great land lizard (Megalemia) comes to hand. Vertobr.-c I receive from time to time, with their evidences of extinct mammals. But thero must be an end m finite working, and I am therefore sending the Hrxean-.hcs on the Fossil Mammals of Australia to the binder." I may here conclude with an earnest request that gold digger*, and others who work m deep soils and river banks, or m caverns, will preserve and consign for scientific examination all fragments as well as whole bonea of fossilised animals or birds, or reptiles. They cannot confer a greater faror on Paleontology than m acting on this suggestion.