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IV.—Note on Remains of the Emu from the Wellington Caves, New South Wales
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
Extract
A few bones of birds are recorded by Mr. Gerard Krefft as having been found in association with the remains of the extinct mammalia, which abound in the breccias of the caves and fissures in the limestone rocks of the Wellington Valley, New South Wales. The bird bones belong to various genera and species, but only those of the Emu seem, as yet, to have been identified, and these were in the possession of the late Rev. W. Branthwaite Clarke. They do not appear to have been described, nor is the number of fragments in the collection stated. Unfortunately Mr. Clarke's valuable collection was deposited for exhibition in the “Palace Garden,” a temporary building erected for the Intercolonial Exhibition at Sydney in 1879–80, and was consumed in the disastrous fire which destroyed the building and its contents soon after its close; and, as regards Mr. Clarke's specimens, the destruction of the material evidence on which the early appearance of the Emu in Australia was founded. However, there is preserved in the palæontological collections in the British Museum, South Kensington, a portion of a shin bone, that I discovered some years ago in a collection of fragmentary remains from the Wellington caves, presented to the National Collection by the Trustees of the Australian Museum, Sydney. The specimen is the distal end of a right tibia, somewhat mutilated, but is interesting as being additional evidence, still existing, of the Emu having been contemporary with the great extinct Marsupials; as such, and on account of the rarity of its remains, I have thought it worthy of a short notice. Compared with the tibia of an adult Emu (Dromaius Novœ-Hollandiœ), it is indistinguishable from it, but has belonged to a larger individual, as shown by the annexed few measurements, in inches and tenths.
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References
page 265 note 1 Catalogue of the Natural and Industrial Products of New South Wales forwarded to the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867, p. 112.
page 265 note 2 Guide to the Australian Fossil Remains exhibited by the Trustees of the Australian Museum, Sydney, 1870. 8vo.
page 265 note 3 Trans. Zool. Soc., 1873, vol. viii. p. 381.
page 265 note 4 Krefft, G., “Australian Vertebrata—Fossil and Recent,” p. 37, Sydney, 1871.Google Scholar
page 267 note 1 Studien über die Wärmevertheilung im Gotthard. Bern 1877.
page 268 note 1 Edinburgh New Phil. Journ. 1853. The writer hopes to recur to this part of the subject.
page 269 note 1 Report of British Association on “Cleavage,” 1856, p. 389. London, 1857.
page 270 note 1 The slate is in the yard of the Eagle Tavern at Cambridge.
page 270 note 2 Phillips on Slaty Cleavage, Brit. Assoc. Reports of the meeting, 1856. Reports 1857, p. 373.—See Sedgwick, “On the Structure of large mineral masses,” Trans. Geol. Soc. 2nd series, vol. iii. 1835, pp. 473, 474.
page 271 note 1 Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. iii. p. 98.
page 272 note 1 See “Physics of the Earth's Crust,” p. 36, where the calculation in a somewhat similar case is made.
page 274 note 1 Loc. cit. p. 384.
page 276 note 1 This appears to be the rationale of M. Tresca's experiments, by which he proved that solid, ductile, or pulverulent bodies, can, without changing their states, flow in a manner analogous to that of liquids, when sufficiently great pressure is exerted on their surface.