THE BURIED PAST.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 452, 10 March 1909, Page 7

THE BURIED PAST.

EXTINCT ANIMALS. TWO THOUSAND SPECIMENS. FOUND IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA. (ll* TE I, Hull A I'll I'ltfSS ASSOCIATION —COPT 111 GUT.) Perth, March 9. I lie Government Palaeontologist, has returned from tho Margaret River, bringing with him '2000 specimens of tho plcistoccno age, mostly in a fragmentary state, but including many perfect, or nearly perfect, bones nnd teeth. A cursory examination reveals tho prescnco of remains of tho diprodoton and also of extinct species of the macropus, nototherinm, and phascolomys, the two last-named genera being now records for Western Australia. DEFINITIONS. Tho pleistocene is the name given bv geologists, with more or less vagueness, to (lie lower division of the quartenuiry or post-tertiary deposits, or to that division which cannot properly bo included under the designation recent. Diprotodon is a genus of extinct marsupial quadrupeds, surpassing the rhinoceros in size. A species has been found in tho posttertiary of Australia. Macropus is tho name given to animals of the kangaroo family. Notolherium is tho name of a genus of gigantic extinct marsupials from the post-tertiafv. Phascolomys is the typical genus of a fahiily wliicli includes tho wombats. They are animals of the Australian regions. A WONDERFUL LIBRARY. Professor J. Arthur Thomson, in his "Bross Lectures," referring to the actual history of tho forms of life as disclosed by this Palaeontologists, says: The fossil-containing rocks have often been compared to a library, with the oldest books on the lowest shelves, but what a library! Spoilt by fire, by water, by earthquake, by decay, here half a shelf awanting and there a series of volumes with mobt .disappointing gaps; pages out of books; words■ missing in sentences, and tho vowels awanting like the points in Hebrew. We are troubled also by palimpsests, one record on the ton of another. We cannot wonder at "the imperfection of tho geological record," when wo remember how young palaeontology is, how young, for that matter, man is—his whole history but a tick of the geological clock; how many areas are still unexplored; how much ground—being covered by sea—must remain unknown. We cannot wonder that the materials of the history are scrappy when we understand that only hard organisms or hard parts nro likely to be preserved, that only certain kinds of rocks aro suitable tombs, and that many rocks have been unmade and remade many times Over.' As we walk along the shore and study the jetsam, we seo how quickly many of the sea s memoranda are obliterated. Tho wonder really is that the record is as coinpleto as it is, that from "tho strange graveyards of the buried past" we can learn so much about the lifo that once was. It is impossible to read even a little about the study of fossils without, a thrill of admiration for the patience and insight o£ the biological archaeologist.