Dinotherium australe Owen, 1843a
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Alleged Australian elephants
Dinotherium australe
As early as 1832, scientists in America and England reported the remains of a proboscidean among the earliest material to be examined from the Wellington Caves of New South Wales (De La Beche, 1832; Pentland, 1832). Georges Cuvier examined bones from the caves, and may have influenced Sir Richard Owen's position in 1838 that they represented a proboscidean (Mitchell, 1838:359; Fensham & Price, 2013:623). Material from the Darling Downs was sent by Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell to England and received by Sir Richard Owen on 6 April 1842 (Owen, 1843a:7), which was described a year later as the proboscidean Dinotherium australe (Owen, 1843a,b). Today, D. australe is considered a subjective synonym of Diprotodon optatum (Mahoney & Ride, 1975:20,86; Price, 2008:395; Camens, 2010).
Mastodon australis
Earlier, in September 1839, Paul Edmund de Strzelecki had bought a fossil tooth from a First Nations person on Boree sheep station in New South Wales (Owen, 1844; Strzelecki, 1845:312 [passage reproduced by Owen (1882:777n)]; Paszkowski, 1968:248). But this was only brought to England in 1843 (a year later than Mitchell's material) (Owen, 1882:777), and so Owen only described it as Mastodon australis in 1844 (Owen, 1844). Now believed to represent a South American proboscidean (Falconer, 1868 fide Mahoney & Ride, 1975:153n; Anderson, 1933:xiii fide Mahoney & Ride, 1975:153n; Dr. Gilbert Price, in litt.1).
Notelephas australis
Owen (1882) discussed an Australian proboscidean under the name Notelephas australis from Queensland's Darling Downs. This is distinct from M. australis, which was described based upon material obtained in New South Wales (their type localities thus differing by hundreds of kilometres) (fide Mahoney & Ride, 1975). Lydekker (1886) found the specimen to lack notable characters (fide Mahoney & Ride, 1975:154n), and Longman (1916) doubted that it originated from Australia (fide Mahoney & Ride, 1975:154n). This alleged Darling Downs material has been examined by Dr. Gilbert Price, who notes that the preservation is not consistent with any Darling Downs material of known Australian origin of Plio-Pleistocene age that he has personally examined, and the specimen is definitely a true proboscidean (Dr. Gilbert Price, in litt.1).
Other reported remains
Dr. Mike Archer reported having examined an elephant tusk (possibly fossilised) held by the proprietor of a roadhouse at Dandaragan, Western Australia in the late 1960's, which was said to have been found on a beach (Archer, 1998:70).
Conservation Status
Invalid (synonym of Diprotodon optatum) (Mahoney & Ride, 1975:20,86; Price, 2008:395; Camens, 2010)
Distribution
Queensland, Australia
Biology & Ecology
Hypodigm
Holotype: BMNH M10796 (Camens, 2010)
Type locality: "Darling Downs [Queensland]" (Mahoney & Ride, 1975:86)
Media
References
Original scientific description:
Owen, Richard. (1843a). On the discovery of the remains of a mastodontoid pachyderm in Australia. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 11: 7-12.
Other references:
Anderson, C. (1933). The Fossil Mammals of Australia. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 58: ix-xxv.
Anonymous [Mitchell, T. L.?]. -Owen Collection-Drawings, folio 443, "plate" b [containing two illustrations of the holotype of Dinotherium australe Owen; the artist is unknown but might be Sir Thomas L. Mitchell]. [cited by (Mahoney & Ride, 1975)]
Archer, Michael. (1998). A legacy of boats, bloats and floaters (Views from the fourth dimension column). Nature Australia 26(3): 70-71.
Camens, Aaron B. (2010). Systematic and palaeobiological implications of postcranial morphology in the Diprotodontidae (Marsupialia). PhD thesis, University of Adelaide. 464 pp.
De La Beche, Henry T. (1832). A Geological Manual. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea. [p. 509]
Falconer, Hugh. (1868). Palaeontological memoirs and notes ..'. 2: 271-277.
Fensham, Roderick J. and Price, Gilbert J. (2013). Ludwig Leichhardt and the significance of the extinct Australian megafauna. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Culture 7(2): 621-632.
Huttunen, Kati. (2001). Systematics and Taxonomy of the European Deinotheriidae (Proboscidea, Mammalia). Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien. Serie A für Mineralogie und Petrographie, Geologie und Paläontologie, Anthropologie und Prähistorie 103: 237-250. ["Not a proboscidean: 1843 Dinotherium Australe Owen:7" (p. 244)]
Longman, H. A. (1916). Proc. R. Soc. Qd 28: 83.
Lydekker, Richard. (1886). Catalogue of the fossil Mammalia in the British Museum (Natural History) 4: xii.
Mahoney, J. A. and Ride, W. D. L. (1975). Index to the genera and species of fossil Mammalia described from Australia and New Guinea between 1838 and 1968. Western Australian Museum Special Publication 6: 1-250.
Mitchell, Thomas Livingstone. (1838). Three expeditions into the interior of Eastern Australia: with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the present colony of New South Wales. London: Boone.
Mitchell, Thomas Livingstone. (1842). (draft dated December 20th, 1842, of letter from Mitchell to Owen, Mitchell Library manuscripts A293-Papers of Sir T. L. MitcheIl, vol. 4, 1840-1849 : 285,6. [referenced by (Mahoney & Ride, 1975:86)]
Owen, Richard. (1843b). Additional evidence proving the Australian Pachyderm described in a former number of the ‘Annals’ to be a Dinotherium with remarks on the nature and affinities of that genus. The Annals and Magazine of Natural History 71: 329-332.
Owen, Richard. (1844). Description of a fossil molar tooth of a Mastodon discovered by Count Strzlecki in Australia. The Annals and Magazine of Natural History 14: 268-271.
Owen, Richard. (1846a). Mastodontoid pachyderm of Australia. The Tasmanian journal of natural science, agriculture, statistics, &c. 2(7): 151-154. [simply a reproduction of Owen (1843a) minus illustrations]
Owen, Richard. (1846b). Description of a fossil molar tooth of a Mastodon: Discovered by Count Strzlecki in Australia. The Tasmanian journal of natural science, agriculture, statistics, &c. 2(11): 451-455. [pages: 451-452, 453-455] [simply a reproduction of Owen (1844) minus illustrations]
Owen, Richard. (1882). Description of Portions of a Tusk of a Proboscidian Mammal. (Notelephas australis, Owen). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 173: 777-781. https://www.jstor.org/stable/109388
Paszkowski, Lech. (1968). Charles Darwin and Strzelecki's book "Physical description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land". Australian Zoologist 14(3): 246-250.
Pentland, Joseph Barclay. (1832). On the fossil bones of Wellington Valley, New Holland, or New South Wales. The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 12: 301-308.
Strzelecki, P. E. de. (1845). Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land: Accompanied by a Geological Map, Sections and Diagrams, and Figures of the Organic Remains. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.
Woodford, James. (2000). The Wollemi Pine: The Incredible Discovery of a Living Fossil From the Age of the Dinosaurs. Australia. Text Publishing. [p. 119; quotes from Archer (1998)]