Notes on a fossil whale from Wynyard, Tasmania

The specimens here referred to were discovered by Mr. R. N. Atkinson in the tertiary fossil-bearing strata of the Table Cape series, imbedded at the present tide line. This horizon is practically basic, and is therefore here assumed to be miocene. The history of the several recoveries of fossil cetacean remains in Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, has of late years been made the subject of an extensive paper by Dr. T. S. Hall, of the Melbourne University.
As far as is known to me, this is the first recorded instance of fossil whale bones belonging to the appendicular skeleton being noted in Australia or Tasmania, and therefore the find is of more than local interest. Against this obvious gain there must be set the manifest disadvantage, that all the tertiary fossil whales have been described from teeth and skulls, while the appendicular skeleton remains quite unknown.