Zoology and the Australian Museums 1

Abstract

ALL who are interested in Mammalian Palæontology and exploration in the Interior of Australia wili readily recall the graphic account contributed to our pages in 1894 (NATURE, vol. 1., pp. 184 and 206), by Prof. Stirling, of the work of an exploring party sent out to Lake Callabonna, under the auspices of the South Australian Museum, of which he is the Hon. Director, for the purpose of collecting the remains of the gigantic vertebrates of Pliocene age known to be there entombed. The lake, known as Lake Mulligan until, at Prof. Stirling's instigation, its name was changed (as he himself informed us at the Zoological Society, on the occasion of his last home-coming), presents conditions wholly unfavourable for successful preservation of organic remains, owing to the action of a saline infiltration. The skeletons of the monsters which there lie are found some four feet beneath the surface mud, spread out in positions indicative of “death in situ after being bogged,” the creatures having crowded down, as the area available for food and water gradually diminished under the influence of climatic change—the whole looking, as Prof. Stirling has aptly remarked, “a veritable necropolis of gigantic extinct marsupials and birds which have apparently died where they lie.”