FLORENTINO A2IEGHIN0 303 



FLOEENTINO AMEGHINO 



Bx Dr. W. D. MATTHEW 



AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 



IN" the death of this distinguished paleontologist science has sus- 

 tained a heavy loss. Our knowledge of the splendid succession of 

 fossil mammalian life in the Argentine is due principally to the work of 

 Ameghino. A collector and explorer whose energy and enthusiasm no 

 handicap of opposition and poverty could overcome, a student of im- 

 mense learning and keen insight, a writer and controversialist of ex- 

 traordinary facility and dialectic skill, a broad thinker and daring spec- 

 ulator, above all a man of high ideals and great patriotism, his life and 

 achievements are well worthy of admiration and' respect. 



Ameghino seems to have interested himself in fossils from boyhood. 

 In 1880, while still, it would seem, in the early twenties, he had already 

 spent ten years of his life in collecting fossil mammals in the Pampean 

 formation in the vicinity of Buenos Aires, and especially in searching 

 for evidences of man contemporaneous with these extinct animals. His 

 conclusions as to the antiquity of man had received notice in the local 

 journals as early as 1875, but had failed to secure the endorsement of 

 the heads of the two great Argentine museums. Failing this endorse- 

 ment at home, he sought to secure it abroad, and in 1878 exhibited at 

 the Paris Exposition a great collection of archeologic and paleontologic 

 remains. (The fossils were purchased by the late E. D. Cope and later 

 came into possession of the American Museum of Natural History in 

 New York.) Fortified by the support received abroad, Ameghino pub- 

 lished in 1880-81 a two-volume brochure entitled "La Antiguedad del 

 Hombre en La Plata," in which his views were set forth in full, to- 

 gether with a history of the controversy. 



In succeeding years his time was given more and more to researches 

 in the older formations underlying the Pampean, and to the collection 

 and study of the wonderful mammalian faunae which they contained. 

 To explore these formations, lying mostly far to the southward, 500 to 

 800 miles from Buenos Aires, involved long expeditions on the part of 

 Ameghino's younger brother Carlos, the elder brother remaining at 

 home to earn the necessary funds for his own and his brother's support 

 through a small stationer's shop which he kept in La Plata. Year after 

 year< these expeditions continued, and their results were published by 

 Florentino in a flood of descriptive and controversial papers, amazing 



