VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY IN 1914 617 



ontological clock is to give to the human race in Argentina a 

 much greater age than it seems entitled to. The latest develop- 

 ment ot the subject occurs in an article published in the Buenos 

 Aires journal La Nation, where positive claim is advanced to 

 the discovery of decisive evidence of the existence of man in 

 Argentina during the Miocene epoch. The basis of this claim 

 is the discovery by Senor Carlos Ameghino, in a deposit in the 

 Chapalmalal gulley, on the Atlantic coast of the province ot 

 Buenos Aires, of a femur of an ancestral member of the group 

 of ungulates typified by Toxodon platensis of the Pampean beds, 

 in the shaft of which is embedded part of what has been identified 

 as a flint arrow-head. A figure in the article shows that this 

 presumed arrow-head is broken off at the level of the surface of 

 the bone ; but no explanation is offered how such a feeble 

 weapon could have penetrated a solid bone like a toxodont femur. 

 Various other traces of man are stated to have been obtained 

 from the Chapalmalal beds, which are regarded as older than the 

 Pampean formation, in which the so-called " Homo pampaeus" 

 occurs ; and if the views of Senor Ameghino with regard to the 

 arrow-head be accepted, it must apparently be admitted that a 

 human being acquainted with the use of fire, and capable 

 of manufacturing bows and arrows, lived with the extinct 

 Chapalmalal fauna. This, however, is far from affording proof 

 that man, in common with the rest of the fauna, was of Miocene 

 age, and in existence prior to the union of South with North 

 America ; this contention being so absolutely improbable, not to 

 say impossible, that it is unworthy of serious consideration. 



Among papers on particular groups or species of fossil 

 mammals, bare mention of the title must suffice in the case of 

 one by Dr. O. Schlaginhaufer, in the Nenjahrsbl. naturfor. Ges. 

 Zurich, vol. cxvi. pp. 1— 19, on the most noteworthy remains ot 

 fossil men and manlike creatures. The same course may also 

 be taken with regard to the full description by Monsieur E. G. 

 Dehaut (Hist. Zool. et Pal. de Corse et Sardaigne, fasc. 5, Paris, 

 1914) of the remains of a monkey from the Sardinian Pleistocene, 

 for which the author has previously proposed the new generic 

 name Ophthalmomegas, in allusion to the large size of the eye- 

 sockets. 



In the article on the present subject published in Science 

 Progress for April 191 3, reference was made to the lower jaw ot 

 an anthropoid ape from the Tertiary of the Pyrenees. This 



