Occasional notes. No. I. Antiquity of man in Australia
Abstract
In 1890 there appeared a short paper by myself, "Has Man a Geological History in Australia?" being an analysis of the statements relative to the supposed discovery of human teeth in the Wellington Cave bone-deposits by Mr. Gerard Krefft. That teeth were found appeared to be an established fact, but that these were taken from the bona-fide bone breccia did not then appear to be satisfactorily decided, hence the conclusion of "not proven" arrived at. Two other points, however, were unknown to me at the time I wrote. The first was that Krefft had figured one of the molar teeth, and the second that at the time of his severance from the Museum, or thereabouts, he had a work in preparation on our Post-Tertiary Mammals, which apparently was to be called "Australian Fossil Remains."
In 1882 there appeared in the published "Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly" a parliamentary paper, "Exploration of the Caves and Rivers of New South Wales," to which were attached a number of plates of Wellington Cave fossils; some of these were photographic reproductions (thirteen plates), the remainder lithographs, numbered Plates 1 to 18. Figs. 3 and 4 of Pl. 12 are two views of a human molar tooth.
